


Of Demons & Blades

by Yrim



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Action, Demons, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24855034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yrim/pseuds/Yrim
Summary: In which Bae Joohyun, a rookie demon slayer decides not to read the address and ambushes the wrong apartment unit. Only, it turns out to be owned by Demon Lord, Kang Seulgi. She ends up getting lessons on how to slay demons by... the demon lord herself.
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kang Seulgi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 72





	1. Meeting The Demon

_'Alright Bae Joohyun, you can do this. It’s only a small fry, nothing to worry about'._ Joohyun tells herself as she adjusts the sword bag she was carrying. Standing at the rooftop of an apartment building, Joohyun was able to get a good view of the city at night. Although it was currently midnight, the city was never at rest. With the lights of the city on at twenty-four seven and bustling with cars, it truly seemed that the city was always so lively.

However spectacular the view may be, Joohyun would always end up looking up at the sky. Even though she would not be able to see the stars -due to pollution from the city lights- Joohyun would always feel calm when she looks up. The big blue sky and clouds were always a way for her to relax. But, now should not be a time where she should be relaxing. No, she needs to get going and act fast. She needs to end it quickly and swiftly to ensure no public chaos.

Just like the city was never at rest, they were also never at rest. The demon slayers were highly trained individuals by the Church of The Seven Virtues to end all darkness and protect the innocent from harm of the demons. Although demons at this age of time were known to have existed to the general public, not many were lucky enough to bare witness to ever see one in action and so was the mission and vision of the Church of The Seven Virtues. That is, to protect and ensure the safety of the general public from harm of darkness.

Joohyun was fumbling around her jacket, looking for her phone to look for the location of the ‘Small Fry' she was supposed to kill that night. Only, when she finds it in her right pocket and takes it out, she realised that her phone has ran out of battery. 

_‘Shit, of all times to die out and you choose now!’_ She mentally cussed to herself. She thinks hard and she is sure she remembers seeing the unit number 210 when she was rushing to her current location just now. _‘Right, unit number 210.’_ She continues to convince herself.

Alright then, it was decided then that she should now start her ambush. She carefully takes out the sheath of her katana blade that was containing the actual katana blade. She continuously reminded herself that the target that night was only a ‘Small Fry' as Sooyoung had briefed her just the day before that her target was only a few decades old demon. 

Although she was a rookie who had only started out for less than a year, Joohyun was quite the excellent slayer. She was guided by the most excellent slayers and was even evolved in a few high profile cases before but tonight was her first time solo-ing. She remembered asking Sooyoung about her first experience solo-ing to which she responded _‘I ate him up Unnie!’_ while grinning happily being reminded about her first experience slaying demons all by herself. 

Albeit being younger than Joohyun by 5 years, Sooyoung was far more experience and mature when it came to demon slaying. She was already into her second year when Joohyun was brought into training and by the time Joohyun was ready to go out and start her career as a demon slayer, Sooyoung was already in her fourth year.

_‘Don’t worry too much about it, you'll come to enjoy killing them one day’_

_‘Enjoy my ass Sooyoung, there’s nothing fun about this’_ was her response.

Giving herself a soft slap to her cheeks, she readied herself and stood on the edge of the rooftop ready to make a dive. “Alright, here goes nothing Joohyun.” With that, she dived and fell. Her fall came to a stop when she reached the fifth floor and landed outside unit 210 on the balcony of the apartment. 

She opened the sliding door and prowled around the apartment looking for said ‘Small Fry'. Only, she found herself looking at a lady singing her heart out belting high notes whilst cooking herself macaroni and cheese in the kitchen.

To say that Joohyun was flabbergasted at the scene currently unfolding before her was an understatement. There shouldn’t be a cute Teddy bear look alike woman standing there. No, it should’ve been a demon instead. 

Demon slayers were born with the natural ability to look pass the disguises that the demons have put upon themselves but Joohyun could not see pass a thing about this woman. She really just looks like some sweetheart enjoying herself but, something did feel off about her. Joohyun can feel that this person standing right in the kitchen wasn’t a human being.

Just as she unsheathed her blade, the woman stopped singing and spoke out “Mind joining me for a late night snack?” 

That one single sentence freaked Joohyun out to the moon and back as her whole body tensed while she looked on wide eye at the woman.

_‘How did she know!’_

If anything, Joohyun was sure she had given herself an invisibility enchantment to hide her visibility and presence.

“Spells like those wouldn’t work on me.” Said the woman as she turned around to look Joohyun straight in the eye and gave her smile. “After all, I’m a demon lord.”


	2. An Agreement?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Demon Lord decides to form an agreement with the demon slayer.

Here she was, seating opposite a cute lady and actually having a late night snack of macaroni and cheese. _‘No no no, this shouldn’t be happening right? What the hell is going on! And why is she so cute!’_

  
“What do you mean what the hell is going on? We're eating mac and cheese that’s what's going on!”

  
Her eyes widen as she looks at the demon lord in front of her incredulously. _‘She can even read my mind!'_

  
“Well, what kind of demon lord am I if I can’t even do telepathy?” 

  
“Well then can you stop reading my mind?” Joohyun asked frustrated. 

  
“Why should I? You don’t even want to admit that you think I’m cute.” There she goes again, showing off that mega-watt smile with that heart fluttering eye smile. 

  
“You think my smile is cute and heart fluttering? Really?” The demon questioned her looking Joohyun in the eyes curiously. Feeling her cheeks heating up, Joohyun denied that the demon was anything but cute. “N-no! You’re not cute at all and can you stop reading my mind!” 

  
“Fine...” Seulgi pouted and picked up her fork. “but you almost destroyed my apartment though. The least you can do is not yell me, no? I even cooked you mac and cheese!”

  
Joohyun thought this really should not be happening, not when just ten minutes ago she was trying to behead the demon and did almost destroyed the whole apartment.

_Ten Minutes Ago..._

_'A demon lord?'_ Joohyun questioned herself. _'_ _Aren’t they supposed to be in the depths of hell?_ _'_

  
“Not all demon lords are like that ya know. It gets boring after sometime.” 

  
Joohyun eyed her target suspiciously as she mentally say a prayer to enhance her speed and strength. Suddenly, time feelt as if it had slowed down and Joohyun quickly rushed to the demon with a quick dash.

  
She drew her sword out deciding to end the demon's life in one quick action but she was taken by surprised when the demon continued to look her straight in the eye. In one swift movement, the demon grabbed hold of Joohyun’s blade and swung her right out of the kitchen. “No one and I say it again, no one! Touches my kitchen! You do not come in uninvited and decide to ruin me and my snack!” 

  
Just as the demon lord stepped out of her kitchen, Joohyun threws her sword vertically towards the demon. The sword propels towards the demon and created a whirlwind destroying anything in its trajectory. It was supposed to be spinning its way back to her but the demon lord grabbed it and threw it away stabbing the wall in the living room right beside the television. “Whew, thank goodness or else even the TV would be gone.” She looks back to the demon slayer, “We can still sit down and have that late night snack. How about it? I'll even forgive you for what you did to my apartment.”

  
_O' Knight of humility grand me thy prowess to destroy whoever comes my way._

Joohyun prayed again as she leaped toward the demon once again with her hand reaching out calling for her sword to return to her. She grabbed the hilt of the sword and this time the blade glowed in an orange hue brightly as she slashed the sword sending bright orange-ish energy waves to the demon. 

  
The demon was not fazed as she stood there facing all the incoming sword beams. The result of the impact of an unstoppable force crashing into an immovable object created an explosion so strong it blew Joohyun away making her back hit the walls of the apartment unit. “Aw man, now the whole place is fucked up.” The demon lord pouted as she complained. 

  
Joohyun took a quick look around the whole apartment and sure enough, the whole place did look destroyed...... except for the kitchen. She turned her attention back to the demon but found her missing only to have her suddenly appear before her grabbing both sides of her shoulder, “Maybe you should calm down and have some snacks with me. You know, have a chat and talk things out before you really end up destroying my living space" 

  
Sure, having late night snack does sound interesting but not when it’s with a demon and you are both in the middle of a fight. Joohyun decided to not give up without a fight as she pushed off the demon who took two steps back before she grabs her and gives her a big headbutt. _'Ouch! That hurts!'_ Joohyun winced as she took on a fighting stance. 

  
“You’re not going to give up unless I really make you give up huh?” With one eyebrow raised, the demon lord questioned her. 

  
_How does she not feel a thing?! That headbutt hurt like hell!_

Joohyun prayed again, this time asking for agility, precision and a miracle. Her leg spreads out a bit as her right foot stepped behind her left foot. The blade glowed once again but this time, in hues of purple.

  
  
She blinked behind the demon in a matter of a second and stabbed her back. Only, it felt easy. Way too easy for the blade to stab through the body of a being so strong that they can even withstood her sword beams. It felt as if her blade had permeated through the demon's body.

  
“Alright fun time’s over young one.” The demon walked through Joohyun’s body and goes into the kitchen to grab two forks and two bowls of macaroni and cheese. She placed the both the bowls and forks down on the small dining table in the dinning room between the kitchen and the living room all the while Joohyun was standing there frozen still wondering what just happened. Was there really no way she can beat this demon? Did Sooyoung lie to her? What ‘Small Fry'? What kind of ‘Small Fry is this? Is Sooyoung going to get it from her when she sees her the day after? Is she even going to make it out alive that night? 

  
Heaving out a sigh, the demon told her to come over and eat with her. “I’m not going to eat you okay? All I’m going to eat is the mac and cheese, now can you just sit down and hear me out?” And so, Joohyun walked over to the chair opposite the demon and sat dow dejectedly.

_Flashback from ten minutes ago ends...._

  
“I was only doing what I’m supposed to be doing...” Joohyun retorted.

  
“What are you supposed to be doing? House wrecking?”

  
“Kill you, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Not sitting down and have mac and cheese with you.”

  
“Kill me?”

  
“Yeah, kill you.”

  
The demon looked at Joohyun with her eyes wide clearly surprised. “Wait a minute, you were trying to kill me? Why?”

  
“Well duh, because you’re a demon. Why else would I, a demon slayer be in your apartment trying to kill at this hour.”

  
The demon looks at Joohyun pouting, “But...but... I had an agreement...”

  
“What agreement? What are you talking about?” Joohyun asked as she raised her eyebrow.

  
“Hold on a second, you’re from the seven dudes church right?” 

  
“What do you mean seven dudes! It’s Church of The Seven Virtues!”

  
“Blah blah blah, basically seven dudes upholding the virtues of the lousy gods. Yup, seven dudes church sounds about right to me.” The demon rolled her eye as she insulted Joohyun. 

  
“Yah! Take back what you said you demon!” Joohyun yelled as she pointed her fork at the demon.

  
“Okay okay, calm down woman.” The demon raises both her hands up surrendering. “But I thought I had an agreement with your church.”

  
“Agreement? The church has an agreement with a demon?” This sounded suspicious, way too suspicious. Was this demon deceiving her? Or was the church keeping a dark secret from its members? Whatever is was, Joohyun refuses to believe the church would do something bad to its members. After all, the Church of The Seven Virtues did save her life before.

  
“Yeah, an agreement for them to back off from me as long as I don’t cause or spread any harm to humanity.” The demon answers Joohyun.

  
“Why would the church back off from you?”

  
“Let me ask you a better one, why not? You don’t fight me I don’t fight you no one loses anything Joohyun! It’s a win-win for all of us!” Truth be told, if the church could actually get rid of a demon lord, they would but she was far too strong for them to just easily get rid of.

  
“No one loses anything huh? Wait a second, why do you know my name!” 

  
“Of course I’d know, I can read minds remember?” 

  
_'I swear I’m going to kill you one day!'_ Joohyun mentallycussed as she looked at the demon with killing intent.

  
“Say, how about I come up with another agreement but this time... with you.”

  
“What kind of agreement?” Joohyun eyed her incredulously. _'_ _What is she planning now?'_

  
“I swear it’s not anything that’s gonna cost you your life! Instead, it’s going on to help you become an even better demon slayer!”

  
“What? What the hell are you talking about!”

  
“What I’m trying to say is, how about I take you under my wing and teach you how to truly slay a demon.”

  
“Why would you, a demon of all things teach a demon slayer how to slay demons? Besides, I’m a very good demon slayer so why would I need you to teach me?” 

  
“If you were really good you would’ve been able to at least deal some damage on me not my apartment Joohyun.” 

  
Okay that is it. This demon really knows how to piss her off. Joohyun stands up and her sword is already flying towards her into her hold but a swipe on the air from the demon’s fingers stops the sword from moving, trapping it in mid air.

  
“Look, I’m giving you a once in a lifetime chance Joohyun. All you gotta do is say yes and we’ll both be on a journey in the wondrous world of demon slaying. How about it ey?” The demon offered once again wearing a bright smile on her face “You don’t always get a chance to be taught by the demon herself you know? I have industrial secrets too! Ones that not even the veteran demon slayers know of!”

  
Joohyun thought to herself, should she do it? Should she give this a try? What if that demon is deceiving her and she’s going to end up getting killed?

  
“I did say it wouldn’t cost you your life just now.”

  
“Can you stop reading my mind! Goddammit!” All she heared was a chuckle from the demon.

  
“Fine, I’ll take the offer.” After a few moment, Joohyun decided to take the offer. She decided that she would follow this demon around to collect information for the church. And if the demon really did turn out to be trying to kill her? Nah, she would not because if she wanted, Joohyun would have been dead by now.

  
“Alright!” The demon announced as she clasped both her hands together. “I have a feeling we’ll both enjoy this wonderful journey of demon slaying!” 

  
The twinkle in her eyes as she grinned sent shivers down Joohyun's spine. Whatever this is, she’s sure it’s not going to be as fun as the demon said.


	3. Who Is She Really?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joohyun agrees to form the agreement with Seulgi and starts her first lesson.

“Give me your hand.” The demon lady instructed as a scroll materialised out of nowhere floating between the both of them above the table. Joohyun let the demon grabbed her left wrist with one hand as the demon suddenly materialised a fountain pen in her other hand. 

  
At first glance, the fountain pen seemed ordinary, maybe even beautiful as it had strings of gold encrusted coiling the body of the pen reaching until the gold made tip of the fountain pen. But, that was only to a normal person because any other demon slayer would beg to differ. In front of her was the Blood Pen of Contract. The specific pen is only used when demons sign life bound contracts. “What are you thinking using a blood pen you?”

  
“So you don’t go around spewing 'industrial secrets' to the church of course. Why would I risk having potential danger to myself? Did you really think I would let you give information to the church? Not a chance Bae.” 

  
“Wait! Hold on a second!” Joohyun shouted for her to stop but “Too late Joohyun!” The demon quickly injected the blood pen into Joohyun’s vein as she screamed from the pain inflicted. 

  
The demon pulled it out and injected the pen into her own veins before finally signing off the contract written on the scroll floating between them. “All done!” She exclaimed oozing off her excitement.

  
_'I swear to god this demon would be the death of me one day!'_

Joohyun pouted as she looked at the now exhilarated demon. “I do have a name you know, you can call me Seulgi so stop calling me demon from now on alright?” She continued to smile brightly at Joohyun.

  
“Maybe you should stop reading my mind from now on!” Joohyun retorted. Ignoring her, Seulgi continued her babbling on what they can do together. “Oh! I have an idea! How about we start now!”

  
“You mean now as in right now?” Joohyun frowned as she looked at Seulgi baffled.

  
“Yup! Right now! There’s a demon in the block right beside us. We can definitely go and kill him! He's a small fry Joohyun there’s nothing to worry about!” All of a sudden, realisation dawned upon Joohyun. 

  
“Hey, can you lend me a charger?” 

  
“Need to charge your phone? Lemme help you with that.” Joohyun gives Seulgi her phone and two seconds is all it took for her phone to be fully charged. She turned on the phone quickly and searched for the address of apartment unit she was supposed to be at. “Are we in Block B?”

  
“No Joohyun, this is Block A but the demon I was talking about is in Block B though"

  
“Ow...” Now it all made sense. Joohyun went to the wrong address and coincidentally, she ended up at the apartment of a demon lord. “Here’s a pro tip Joohyun, next time read the locations correctly before you start your mission.” 

  
“Well here’s a pro tip for you too Seulgi, next time stop reading someone else’s mind because you’re not respecting my privacy.”

"Ouch"

*******

  
When both Sooyoung and Seulgi had mentioned small fry, Joohyun had thought it was because the demon was only a few decades old not but it turns out, it was quite literally a ‘Small Fry'. 

  
_‘What the hell Seulgi! Why didn’t you tell me about this?’_ Joohyun complained as she tried to slash the fly-demon only to end up slashing nothing but air. 

  
_‘You’ll just have to deal with it, I'll come and help after I’m done with the living room.’_

  
Just before they have decided to head onto the address of the fly-demon, Seulgi had apparently decided that she should fix her half destroyed apartment first but Joohyun was impatient. 

  
She needed to slay the demon quick and make her report back to the church or things will start feeling suspicious as she had already taken quite a lot of time dealing with Seulgi beforehand. And so, Joohyun headed out first by herself without Seulgi but Seulgi had a hunch that things may not go smoothly so she had them both connect telepathically.

  
_‘You should’ve at least given me a heads up you know.’_ Because ‘clearly’, Joohyun would’ve came up with a plan to deal with the ‘Small Fry' of a demon if she had known. 

  
_‘I did, didn’t I? I gave you spiritual container so he wouldn’t be able to escape the apartment.’_

  
A spiritual container is a container that traps all things inside its confine. When set up, victims would not realise that they are trapped as the container is invisible and expands into a rather large area. It is only when victims have reached the ends of the container will they know that are trapped within a spiritual container.

  
To put it in simple terms, spiritual containers are similar to force fields that trapped people in fictional stories. 

  
_‘Sigh, just quickly finish up your living room please. I don’t know how I’m going to slay him at all!’_

  
_‘Just hang in there alright? I’m almost done and, at least he’s not fighting back but it wouldn’t take long for him to figure out his trapped in the spiritual container so try to keep him in your range until then’_

  
Joohyun did not respond as she busied herself with chasing the flying small size demon.

_Meanwhile on Seulgi’s end..._

“So, how long are you gonna stand there and act like you don’t exist?” Seulgi questioned to the person who had been eavesdropping on her and Joohyun before then.

  
“What do you think you are doing Lord Seulgi? What is the meaning of this? Are you thinking of betraying your own race!” The person revealed himself to her as he accused her of betrayal. 

  
“Why, if it isn’t the crown prince of pride, Taeyongie! What made you come here?” Seulgi ignored him and waved her left hand from right to left as everything previously destroyed in the apartment was magically restored back to their original state.

  
To Taeyong, it was as if he was watching everything being destroyed played backwards as it all becomes as good as new. 

  
“Don’t change the topic here Lord Seulgi, what were you thinking? Teach a demon slayer? Are you crazy!”

  
“So what if I am? You gonna stop me?” 

  
“Lord Jiyong would not be pleased to hear of this.” Taeyong threatened.

  
“Tell the Lord of Pride that I don’t give two flying fucks about him and don’t come into my apartment uninvited anymore. I don’t need a watch dog to report my each and every action. Do you need me to remind you that I’m a lord as well, Taeyong?” 

  
When Seulgi had questioned him, her pitch dropped so low it sent shivers down Taeyong's spine.

  
“Leave now, I still have other matters to attend to.” Taeyong nodded his head and leaved immediately back into the _Inferno_.

*****

Joohyun has been chasing this particular demon for half an hour and she had done close to no progress at all. All she had been doing was cutting air again and again as she chased down the demon inside the apartment unit, it certainly does not help that her target was the size of a fly.

  
“Stop flying and face me you stupid demon!” she cussed as she continued to try and slash the small demon in half. All of a sudden, the demon had turned back to look at her as if realising that it had been trapped.

  
“Finally decided to man up huh?” but Joohyun regretted taunting as the fly-demon suddenly increased its size, becoming bigger and bigger. By the time it had finish growing, the fly-demon was three heads taller and larger than Joohyun. 

  
_‘Oh shit.’_ Joohyun cussed as she quickly dodged a swing from the fists of the demon. She stabled herself and started saying her prayers asking for a tenfold increase in her strength to cut her enemie's exoskeleton body.

  
She was only halfway into her prayer when the bug demon swinged its other two arms at her. She had no way to finish her prayer in time as she had to dodge the attack. As the attacks of the demon became faster and faster, Joohyun had no way to dodge each and every of them so she had no choice but to parry the attacks from the demon and hope to trade a few blow and slashes in between.

  
_‘Small fry my ass Sooyoung, my sword isn’t even doing anything to this thing.’_ Joohyun swore that if she really somehow did make it out alive that night, she would give Sooyoung hell the next day. 

  
Joohyun was starting to lose hope when the blade of her katana started cracking. Her blade’s endurance was not able to keep up with the bug demon’s endless barrage of attacks. 

  
“I thought you said you can handle him yourself when you ran out just now but what do we have here.” The sudden arrival of Seulgi surprised the bug demon, allowing Joohyun time to step back and reposition herself. 

  
The demon ignored the presence of Seulgi as he had sensed that Joohyun was getting ready to strike him. He took a step back getting ready to strike a hard blow with both of his right fists. 

  
The blade of Joohyun’s katana broke into two halves the moment it clashed against the demon’s two hard fists and the result of the hard clash blew Joohyun away.

  
Her brain did not even fully registered that she was blown away before she was cushioned by Seulgi. She had managed to catch Joohyun and helped her avoid a serious injury. When Joohyun finally realised seconds later that she was being carried by Seulgi briday style, she blushed madly.

  
“Yah! Put me down!”

  
“Is this how you’re supposed to talk to someone who had supposedly saved your ass?” Nonetheless, Seulgi did put her down and helped her stand up again. 

  
“Need help with that fellow over there?”

  
“I need to say a prayer but it might take awhile, think you can keep his attention on you?”

  
“Of course I can, what do you take me for Joohyun?” All she got back was a hard slap on the arm before Joohyun moved back to recite her prayer.

  
During the whole conversation, the demon had only stood there watching the both of them interact. 

  
_‘What is going o-'_

  
“Tag! You’re it!”

  
Before he even had the chance to question himself, Seulgi had already appeared in front of him striking a hard blow to the face so strong the bug demon’s exoskeleton started to cracked. The demon bug took two steps back to stable himself before looking at Seulgi straight to the eyes. 

  
“Damn, you’re a hard one to crack huh.”

  
**_“Why is a demon lord like you here?”_ **

  
**_“Does it not look like I’m trying to kill you?”_** answered Seulgi as she continuously dealt blow after blow of punches to the demon.

  
_**“Don’t bullshit me, if you have wanted me dead. I’d be pulverised by now.”** _

  
_**“Don’t you have eyes? I’m helping out the little girl over there.”** _

  
**_“Whatever you’re doing wouldn’t sit well the other lords especially Lord Jiyong.”_ **

  
_**“Ya know, for a small fry like you, you’re quite disrespectful huh.”** _

  
The demon screamed a battle cry and grabbed onto her left arm only for her to pull back to break away from the hold but she used a bit too much strength and ended up pulling out the demon's lower right arm. The demon screamed again but this time in pain at the same time as Joohyun shouted out “I’m done!”

  
“Alright! I'll send him over to you!” with that, Seulgi grabbed onto the upper two arms of the demon to swing and throw him towards Joohyun. Her half broken blade started glowing up in hues of crimson red as she jumped forward meeting the bug demon mid air. “Die!” she yelled into his face as she grabbed onto the demon and stabbed him right on the head blowing up his head.

*****

“What were you two talking about just now?” Joohyun remembered the two demons talking but could not understand a single thing. _‘Perhaps a demonic language?’_

  
“Nothing to worry about.” Seulgi assured as they clean up the nearly destroyed apartment unit.

  
“Were you two talking in a demonic language?”

  
“You know, you really shouldn’t be worrying about this Joohyun instead why don’t you worry about the time it takes for you to recite your prayers? How does that sound hmm?”

  
“What are you talking about?”

  
“Do you not realise how it takes too much time for you to pray when you fight?”

  
“Oh, well that’s because he was too fast.”

  
“Wrong Joohyun, it’s because you’re too slow. When you’re in a fight where each second matters, your slowness might just be the cause of your death one day.”

  
“Then what do you suppose I do then"

  
“Cut down on what you say when you pray.”

  
“Cut...down?” Whatever Seulgi was saying was not making any sense to Joohyun. 

  
“You don’t have to say the whole prayer Joohyun, you only need to say the important parts.”

  
“Ermm what?” Joohyun really was not catching on whatever Seulgi was telling her. A deadpanned look was what she saw in return. 

  
“Sigh, I’ll show you an example. What do you say when you pray for strength? Show me.”

  
Joohyun nodded and started reciting her prayer. 

  
_“O' great holy Knight of diligence, bestow upon me thy strength to stand against whoever obstructs my path.”_

  
When she finished reciting, a red glow surrounded her as she felt the blessings flowing through her.

  
“You took too long to recite Joohyun, I would’ve already killed you before you’re even halfway done.”

  
“Then how do you suppose I fix this problem then? O' smart ass.” She countered sarcastically as she eyed Seulgi, annoyance clearly oozing off of her.

  
“It's as simple as I said, you cut down what you say.”

  
“How then?”

  
“Instead of full sentences, all you need to say is what you need. For example, when you prayed for strength just now, it’s either you pray to the virtue of Diligence or Humility right? All you gotta say is ‘Humility’ and ‘Strength'.”

  
“Huh, that doesn’t make any sense"

  
“Sigh, when you pray you’re asking the virtues for blessings not humans Joohyun. They don’t need all those poems, just be direct. If your faith is strong enough, then they’ll bless you no matter what.”

  
Suddenly the room had grown quite as Joohyun looked at Seulgi like she had grown another head. 

  
“What? Don’t believe me? Go ask your seniors then although some might not know since its a high level technique.” Seulgi shrugged her shoulders before continuing, “but I’m pretty sure the seven knights all do this.”

  
At the mention of the seven knights, Joohyun’s eyebrows had perked up, “The seven knights? They all do it this way?”

  
“Yup, go home now and try it yourself later. I'll finish up everything.”

  
“It’s okay, I still have sometime left.” Joohyun protested.

  
“No, just go home and rest up.” Before Joohyun could protest again, Seulgi had teleported her back into the streets along with her katana inside her sword bag. 

*****

While walking on her way home back to her apartment, she had been thinking about a few particular things. Is she really having a demon teaching her how to properly kill demons because how does Seulgi know so much about demon slayers? She even knew the advance techniques that even the seven knights use. 

  
But, when she opened the door to her apartment, all thoughts are gone as she stared at all the mess and one teenage girl who looked about sixteen or seventeen-ish standing in the middle of all the mess.

  
The girl smiled sheepishly clearly embarrassed by all the mess she had caused before she waved at Joohyun. “Hi, my name is YeRi.”


	4. Mister What?

“Who are you and what are you doing to my house!” Anger and confusion was seething out from Joohyun as she looked at the mess the young girl had caused. 

  
It was as if her whole apartment had met a hurricane, everything was out of place and something smelt weird. Almost like the smell of burnt toast, whatever it was it did not smell nice to Joohyun.

  
“Look, I can explain so don’t be angry alright?” Yerim held one hand in front of herself as she tried to calm Joohyun down.

  
“You better have a good explanation or nothing good is going to come out of this!”

  
As it turned out, Yerim was a student from the church academy or a ‘trainee’ as she had called herself. She was sent from the academy to live with Joohyun for her field research. She was supposed to try and work with Joohyun to get first hand experience on demon slaying.

  
“Let me get this straight, they want me, a rookie who only started for less than a year to supervise you? What are they thinking?” 

  
“They even gave me to letter so I can give it you. Wait here, I’ll go get it.” Yerim ran off to her room to get her letter.

  
_‘Sigh, she even went and picked her own room.’_

  
_‘Who went and picked her own room?’_ Hearing another voice inside her head shocked her but after realising who the voice belong to, annoyance was what she felt rather than feeling alert.

  
_‘None of your business, why are you even inside my head anyways.’_

  
_‘Cause I’m bored, keep me entertained please?’_

  
Joohyun ignored her as Yerim had finally came out of her room to give her the letter. She took the letter from her and opened it to see that it was from a friend who had recommended Yerim to her. The friend had even asked her to take good care of Yerim.

  
“You should know what to do right? Cause I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now.” Yerim's question gave Joohyun a ‘WTF' moment as she looked at Yerim dumbfounded.

  
“What do you mean you don’t know what to do? Doesn’t the academy give you any instructions?”

  
“But you’re the senior here, shouldn’t you already have experience on this?”

  
“Yerim, I didn’t went to the academy.”

  
“If you didn’t study at the academy then how did you even become a demon slayer?”

  
“You don’t need to know about that but I need to know something though.” Joohyun took a look around the whole apartment -it was a mess, a very big mess- before turning back to look at Yerim. “Why is my apartment a mess? Kim Yerim, you better have a good explantion for this.”

  
Gulping, Yerim replied “I was just trying to cook up something!”

  
“Cook? You have the audacity to break into my apartment without consent, cook something and even cause a whole mess!” Oh, Joohyun was pissed, really pissed. 

  
“I-I know I was intruding so I thought maybe cooking something for you would make you feel better...” Well that explained why the apartment had the smell of burnt toast lingering around.

  
“Okay Yerim, you tried to cook something for me. I can get that but that does not explain the whole mess"

  
“Well, you see. You have nothing in your fridge and cabinet except for bread and jam so I thought maybe toast bread and jam would do it but I accidentally drop jar and brok-”

  
“You what! You broke the jar and wasted a whole jar of unopened jam!” This young girl sure knew how to piss her off. Apparently having one Seulgi to annoy her was not enough, now a Kim Yerim was added in to test her temper.

  
“I tried to clean up! I was looking for a mop but I didn’t find it so I searched around the whole house and ended up.... in this situation.” Yerim looked up from her lap to see a Joohyun with a very scary expression. She decided that it was either fight or flight and chose flight without a second thought. So, she made a dash toward her room screaming “I’m so sorry!”

  
“Sigh, kids these days.” Joohyun complained to herself before standing up to clean up the mess Yerim had caused.

  
_‘Don’t get angry Joohyun, she was just trying to make something for you to eat.’_

  
_‘I know, and your invading my privacy again Seulgi.’_ Joohyun knew Yerim only meant good and maybe, that’s why she could not really bring herself to get angry at the girl. Plus, having someone else living with her again should not be that bad. After her previous housemate had transferred to another branch, she had to move out of the apartment so it had been rather lonely for Joohyun.

  
_‘You can always come to my apartment and live with me Joo Joo! I'll make you not feel lonely ever again!’_

  
_‘Can you just get the fuck out of my mind! And what even is Joo Joo!’_

  
_‘I've thought of a nickname for you! Doesn’t Joo Joo sound cute?’_

  
_‘Argh! Fuck off Seulgi!’_ Giggles were all she heard from Seulgi.

*****

Joohyun may not be angry at Yerim but there was one person who needs to hear it from her and it is Park the freaking Sooyoung. 

  
“What the hell Sooyoung!” Joohyun exclaimed as she slammed a thick antique book on the table shocking Sooyoung.

  
“Y-yah! What the hell is wrong with you!” 

  
“What do you mean what the hell is with me, Sooyoung! What the hell is with you!”

  
“Hold up woman! What is going on and why are you what the hell-ing me? What did I do?” Sooyoung pointed to herself questioning Joohyun.

  
“You said ‘Small Fry’ Sooyoung, not small fly!”

  
“Ow, that. Well, did you kill him?”

  
“O-of course I did!” Thinking back, if it was not because of Seulgi, Joohyun probably would not have made it out alive that night.

  
Sooyoung felt something suspicious from how Joohyun had responded her but decided to brush it off as her interest was on something else. 

  
“By the way.”

  
“What"

  
“What’s with the big ass book, Hyun.”

  
“This book? I’m just looking for information on something.”

  
“What thing?”

  
“Sooyoung, do you anything about demon lords?” Okay, there is definitely something going on with Joohyun.

  
Sooyoung squinted her eyes eyeing Joohyun suspiciously before replying, “Yeah, I know a few things about them. What about it? Anything happen to you?”

  
“Nothing, was just suddenly interested in them.”

  
“Okay, well what do you wanna know about?”

  
“What exactly are demon lords and what do they do?”

  
“It’s kinda hard to explain what exactly they do but to put it simply, they are lords who govern the _Inferno_.”

  
“The inferno? What’s that”

  
“It’s basically another name for hell but that’s what the demons prefer to call it. Just read the book Joohyun, maybe you'll find something.”

  
After a half an hour read, Joohyun found out that there were seven demon lords all together. Each representing the seven mortal sins. Namely, pride, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, greed and sloth. The seven lords would each govern different territories in the _Inferno_ that are related to the mortal sins they represent with the Demon Lord of Pride being the center and most powerful of them as Pride is deemed as the source of all the other six mortal sins.

  
The demon lords feed on the human sins to become stronger. Because of this, the demon lords would sometimes tempt humans to commit such sins to gain strength. 

  
Not only that, Joohyun also found out that stronger demons would tempt and sign contracts to give humans power only for the demon to feed on them in the end to increase their own prowess.

  
_‘These demons are so despicable!’_ Joohyun thought to herself as she continued reading.

  
_‘You do know you’re in a contract with one as well right? A life bound contract even...’_

  
_‘I’m doomed aren’t I.’_ At this point, Joohyun has given up on telling Seulgi to back off from her mind.

  
_‘Don’t worry Joo Joo! I wouldn’t eat you!’_

  
_‘Fuck off Seulgi!’_ Okay, I take back what I said.

  
_‘Don’t you remember? I have a contract with the church, no harm and they back off so of course I wouldn’t eat people.’_

  
_‘So you’re saying that if there’s no contract with the church you’re going to eat me then?’_

  
_‘Of course Joo Joo! But I’ll only eat you in bed though! No way am I literally eating you! Or do you prefer me eating you somewhere else, hmm?’_ Seulgi teased knowing Joohyun's face would be bright red from what she just said.

  
“Argh, fuck off!” Joohyun accidentally yelled out instead of mentally, surprising everyone in the room as they all turned their heads to look at her embarrassing her further causing her cheeks to flush even more.

*****

It was only a few days after that night of meeting the demon lord and having to deal with her constant annoying ass plus another annoying Yerim that Joohyun finally received a new request from the church to hunt a demon. Yerim was supposed to go with her that night but she was having a stomach ache from eating that leftover spicy food from two days ago for lunch in the afternoon.

  
“Just go without me, Joohyun _unnie_. I can handle myself, kill the demon in my name and honour for me _unnie_.” Yerim said dramatically as she waved Joohyun goodbye before she had to leave the apartment for her mission. Joohyun gave her a deadpanned look before retorting, “Don’t cause any trouble while I’m not around Yerim.”

  
“Of course I wouldn’t, what do you take me for? An irresponsible teenager?” Yerim replied sounding offended.

  
“After what you did a few nights ago, I can’t say otherwise.”

  
“T-that was an accident alright!” Yerim knew there was no way for her to defend herself.

  
“Sure Yerim, then don’t cause another accident okay?” Joohyun said with an overly fake motherly tone.

  
“Eww, just go and do your job already!” Sighing, Joohyun stood up from sitting on the couch but as she made her way toward the door to turn the door knob, she heared a shout of “Good luck unnie!” from Yerim. Smiling to herself, Joohyun left the apartment to start her mission.

*****

  
“Well someone seems to be happy tonight.” Suddenly hearing a voice and having a person appearing out of nowhere should have scared the life out of Joohyun but knowing it was just Seulgi only made her felt annoyed.

  
“How is it that you know where I am every time?”

  
“I’m omnipresent Joo Joo, I’m everywhere.” Scoffing from the statement, Joohyun continued to walk to the location for her hunt. This time, the demon was found to be residing in a park.

  
“Did you read the location correctly this time?”

  
“Sigh, yes Seulgi. I read it over a few times to make sure before I came over.”

  
They passed by a product advertisement with the name ‘Irene&co.’ when they were near the park. Irene took out her phone and look at the location written out on her phone again to make sure she was really at the right place. 

  
“Something doesn’t feel right, Joohyun.” Seulgi warned her as they both enter the park through the entrance gate. 

  
“What doesn’t feel right?” Suddenly alert from Seulgi's warning, she questioned her.

  
“He feels like a rather strong one.”

  
“Huh, how strong then?” Joohyun asked as she takes out the katana she had borrowed from Sooyoung. 

  
She remembered asking if Sooyoung was really okay with lending the katana to her but she reassured her that she does not even use a katana. She only got it because it was a reward for killing a high class demon sometime ago. 

  
“I don’t use the katana, the only things I use are hammers Hyun and that’s only because some of them have hard shells.” Right, Joohyun recalled seeing Sooyoung carrying her gigantic hammers a few times before. 

  
Sooyoung had two favourites, one was humongous mallet that looked rather comical at first sight. The handle of the mallet was almost as long as Joohyun -it had rreached until her shoulders- and the head of the mallet was big, very big that it was as wide as Joohyun. But, as heavy and bothersome as it seemed, Sooyoung did not have any problem handling it at all. She could carry the mallet with one hand and spin it around like it was pen. Sometimes, Joohyun wonders whether or not Sooyoung was human.

  
Sooyoung's other favourite would be something akin to a mix of both a hammer and an axe as the head of the weapon had different faces on both side. On one end would be the head of an axe while on the other end is that of a hammer. It kind of resembled the weapon she saw a guy carrying from a superhero movie poster.

  
Focusing her attention back to her mission for tonight, Joohyun pulled out the katana from its sheath. “Can you help me locate him?” 

  
“Sure, he’s right over there.” Seulgi pointed over to a bench right by the walk path. At first glance, the bench seemed normal like any other you’d see but taking a second look, Joohyun’s eyes finally saw through the demon's disguise.

  
“Remember your prayers Joohyun, short and direct.” Seulgi reminded as she stepped back to let Joohyun do her job. She should not be interfering that much. After all, she was only supposed to be teaching her. Seulgi decided she would only intercept when necessary.

  
_‘Alright Joohyun, you can do this!’_ She starts her prayers asking for different bunch of blessings before she dashed for the demon. 

*****

“What the hell Seulgi! You didn’t tell me he has wings!” Joohyun remembered reading about this from the book that afternoon.

  
Demons that have cultivated for more than centuries would develop wings. Having a pair of wings was a symbol amongst demons, it symbolised the wisdom and power an individual has over the other demons. Having a pair of wings means that the demon is of a higher class.

  
“I did, Joo Joo! But you were busy spacing out thinking of hammers!”

  
“How many time do I have to tell you! I have a name an-" She didn’t even get to finish her sentence before the flying demon spit out a fireball in her direction.

  
“Need help?” Hearing this really annoyed Joohyun. All the while she was fighting the demon, Seulgi had managed to pull out a can of Pringles out of no where to watch the fight happen nonchalantly.

  
“Alright Joo Joo I’ll help!" She put the can of Pringles down carefully onto the ground before she walked towards the battle.

  
“Yah! I said no calling me Joo Joo!” Even though she was busy parrying the random fireballs with her blade, Joohyun still found time to complain Seulgi.

  
_‘I can’t let him know your name Joohyun.’_ What did Seulgi meant by this? Not letting the demon know her name? 

  
_‘Why?’_ Joohyun could not think of a reason for this, not like she had time to think in the middle of fight with a high class demon anyways.

  
_‘He has wings Joohyun, that should tell you he can knows how to tempt humans. If he knows your name, the temptations will be stronger. Wouldn’t wanna risk anything right?’_ This was definitely news to Joohyun, she knew the high class demons could do this but she didn’t know of the significance of knowing names. 

  
The flying demon suddenly wrapped its body with both wings and dived towards Joohyun while spinning, creating a whirlwind. 

  
_‘Ow shit.’_ Joohyun thought but Seulgi had suddenly blinked before her and stopped the whirlwind of a demon with a flick of her finger.

  
“Play time’s over buddy, pick someone your own size!”

  
**_“Lord Seulgi, if I have to pick someone my size it definitely wouldn’t be you.”_** This one made her raised an eyebrow. He actually has manners unlike the bug dude.

  
**_“Then what the hell are you doing here for?”_** Seulgi asked as a ball of fire formed on her right hand. One much larger than the fireballs the demon had previously spat, it was even larger than Joohyun. **_“You better have a good explanation or this is coming to your face young man.”_**

  
**_“With all due respect Lord Seulgi, whatever I’m doing here has no business with you.”_ **

  
**_“You’re right but I don’t like your answer.”_** And so she threw the fireball, it had travelled so fast it covered the distance in a mere second.

  
“Wait!” A human child had suddenly jumped out in between them making Seulgi dissipate the ball of fire. It was a young girl who stood in the middle of the fight with both her arms spread and legs shaking from fear. Crying, the young child cried out, “Don’t kill Mr. Poopy!”

  
“Mister what!” Both Seulgi and Joohyun shouted out in confusion.


	5. The Exiled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, ermm... I messed up and uploaded the wrong chapter during the previous update. You should read the previous chapter before you read this. :)

“M-mister P-poopy! I said don’t kill him!” The poor child looked like she was really about to have a breakdown right in front of them.

  
_‘Shit, what do we do Joo Joo?’_ Seulgi looked back to Joohyun, confused.

  
_‘How do I know!’_ Confusion was clearly shown on both of their faces. 

  
The demon behind the young girl saw their hesitation and took it as a chance. He flew to the young girl to grab and carry her before he flew away.

  
“Ow shit!” Joohyun cussed as she realised the demon had flown away with the young girl. Feeling as though the demon have not gone far, Joohyun decided to give chase but her arm was grabbed by Seulgi before she was even given the chance to make a run for it.

  
“What the hell Seulgi! He took a young child! A young human child!”

  
“I know you’re angry but calm down alright? Go home and rest, report it to the church. I'll go and find him, if I see anything I'll tell you first thing alright?”

  
“But, Seulgi he’s not far. I can still go after him!” Joohyun tried to argue.

  
“It wouldn’t be a smart move to run around the streets carrying a katana, don’t you think?” Seulgi countered, putting some sense into Joohyun.

  
“Sigh, alright. I'll go home.” Sighing dejectedly, Joohyun sheathed her katana and walked home before bidding Seulgi goodbye.

  
“What do you mean goodbye Joo Joo! I’m always on your mind remember?" As if saying something like that was not annoying enough, Seulgi had decided to say it in an aegyo voice. Sure, it sounded cute but Joohyun would never admit it.

  
“Just admit it Joo Joo! I know you think I’m cute!” Joohyun did not even need to look back to know that Seulgi had a shit eating grin on her face.

*****

“It’s okay now, Heejin. Don’t cry anymore.” The demon cooed softly to stop the young girl from crying as they land on the rooftop of an apartment building. 

  
“Y-you almost d-died Poopy!” Heejin hiccupped as she wiped her tears away with the sleeves of her sweater.

  
“I wouldn’t die so easily Heejin, don’t worry about me.”

  
“You should worry about her though.” The demon quickly turned around, suddenly alert at the sound of another person. His eyes quickly darted across the whole rooftop and spotted Seulgi standing not far from them. 

  
The demon spread out his wings covering the young girl protectively before he looked over to Seulgi, one look at him could tell her as clear as day that he was willing to put his life on the line for this young child.

  
“Why protect the young child, she’s a human.” Seulgi asked curious as to what the relationship between them was. 

  
“I could say the same for you Lord Seulgi, what business do you have with a human girl then? A demon slayer even.” He countered, trying to stall time for his impending doom.

  
Sighing, Seulgi put up her hands to show that she was not there to fight or kill. 

  
“I’m not here to do anything stupid. Tell me about it, what happened?”

  
And so, they sat down by table that Seulgi had pulled out of no where again. The demon gave her a dumbfounded look before she responded with, “What? You don’t have a table and chairs stored somewhere in your dimensional pocket?”

  
It took a long time for the demon to tell her everything -the whole night- as he held the young girl while she slept. From what he had said, Seulgi had learnt that he was actually a Lieutenant General for the Lord of Pride. 

  
Demons do not have a military hierarchy but each demon lord do have their own council of generals -only the Lord of Wrath does not have a council as they prefer to go on a rampage by themselves when on the battlefield- so whatever the demon opposite her was, he would be the equivalent to the role of a lieutenant general as the second in command right behind a general when on the battlefield.

  
“Let me get this straight Hanbin, you were exiled by that pride bastard? For what? Not killing this child??” She pointed to Heejin who was sleeping soundly in the embrace of Hanbin.

  
“Originally, I was fighting with her parents but who would’ve thought a Knight would appear.” 

  
Seulgi continued to listen to what he had to say, it turned out to be that three weeks ago Hanbin was fighting with Heejin's parents who were both high ranked demon slayers. Hanbin himself was able to subdue both the demon slayers while trying to make an escape, he never wanted any blood spilled without any reasons. 

  
Hanbin had always been the passive type, never the type to start a fight unless he had no choice. He would only hunt and feed on humans who truly deserved it, the ones who continued to commit mortal sins with no repentance.

  
Both the high ranked slayers were doing everything they could to take him down but there was a big gap between their abilities and his, so Hanbin had tried to subdue them before making an escape. He never would have thought they were actually stalling time for a Knight to arrive. 

  
Two high ranked demon slayers? Hanbin was pretty confident he could take them down but a Knight? He would only face death. It was either fight or flight for Hanbin and flight was definitely the optimal choice so he made a run for it, to escape back to the _Inferno_. 

  
But, the Knight was fast. In fact, too fast that Hanbin was not able to shake her off if he did not put up a fight so he did, hoping he could weaken the Knight a bit before making another escape when the chance appears. 

  
They were fighting while the demon slayers were jumping from one rooftop to another with the Knight shooting out a fusillade of bullets from her two revolvers at him. Using one wing to cover himself from the bullets, his swung the other wing blowing the three demon slayers back. 

  
_‘Now’s the chance, Hanbin!'_ He cheered for himself mentally as he tried to zoom out from their sight but a change in ammunition from the Knight stopped him from flying further. The Knight shot out bullets that would explode and freeze whatever it had come in contact with. 

  
Doing so had made Hanbin's wings frozen still as he fell towards the rooftop of large corporate building. He quickly stood up when the Knight had landed on the rooftop with both the other two demon slayers catching up.

  
“Ms. Nayeon, are you alright?” The male slayer of the group had asked.

  
“What do you take me for? I am the Holy Knight of Patience ya know? Nothing of this scale would be a danger to me.” Nayeon responded grinning cheerfully with confidence, confident that Hanbin would not even land a scratch on her skin.

  
Just after she had finished her sentence, Hanbin spat out fireballs but Nayeon had quick reflexes. She jumped and dodged the fireballs mid air as she shot at the ground using the recoil to control her movement. Her excellent maneuver had honestly both impressed and amazed him but he was too caught up trying to stay alive. 

  
It definitely was not easy trying to escape from a Knight, Hanbin felt like he had been in her control the whole time, that she had just been playing a game of mouse and cat with him. To add on, bullets from normal low ranks demon slayers could not even do much to him but the Knight’s bullets were especially blessed. After all, they are the ones who would take on the demon lords whenever one would appear.

  
Hanbin was ready to give up on his life as Nayeon changed up her ammunition to her Star Killer bullets but she stopped just after she had changed them. She jumped back warning the other two demon slayers to get out there.

  
“Something’s not right! Run and call for back up! Get the Knights!” She shouted out to them both as black smoke started to appear from the ground covering the whole rooftop. 

  
The black smoke gathered as clouds and clouds of thunderstorm gathered right above them, above the corporate building. 

  
_**“I believe you have an explanation for this, Hanbin?”**_ The gathering black smoke formed the body of what seem to be the likes of a possessed human as the deep voice spoke out questioning Hanbin of his actions. 

  
**_“Cowardice is not the way, Hanbin.”_** The demon reminded him as the body finally materialised.

  
_**“L-lord Jiyong!”**_ Too shook, Hanbin was only able to say out the name of the strongest Demon Lord as he stood in front of him.

  
**_“Kill the other two.”_** was Lord Jiyong's response as the two high ranked demons slayers suddenly dropped to the ground forced by gravity. 

  
_‘Ow shit, that’s the real deal!’_ Nayeon cussed as she looked at the two interact.

  
_‘Calm down Im Nayeon, you have your Star Killers and your babies with you tonight. Nothing to be scared, it’s just the Lord of Pride right? Right, nothing to be scared about.’_

  
She clicked the hammers of the purple revolvers and tightened her grip as she aimed and shot the demon lord but it was all for naught as it did no damage to the possessed body. One bullet that was stuck on his fake body was pulled out as he inspected it.

  
“Ah, the Star Killers. Haven’t seem them in a while, you must be a Knight then?” He continued to inspect the bullets not even sparing a single glance at the Knight of Patience.

  
“Aren’t the bullets pretty much self-explanatory, you dummy!” Nayeon shouted back sarcastically but deep down she knew she had lost her only hope.

  
The Star Killer bullets were made specially to slay Demon Lords, they were so powerful that one shot would wipe out half a city but Nayeon being Nayeon would end up using revolvers and refuse to carry grenade launchers. So, the Star Killer bullets made for Nayeon were divided and reduced to the size of regular bullets. The power decreased does not mean it is any less threatening, a single shot could end the life of a winged demon.

  
_‘Im Nayeon, you’re not going down without a fight!’_ and fight she did. Only, anything she would do was futile. 

  
“Give up, human.” The Demon Lord said, grabbing her neck as black smoke seethed out of his arm. Jiyong had originally been disappointed with Hanbin but now seeing a Knight, it would provide a good feeding for him.

  
_**“I'll forgive you, Hanbin. After all, you got me a Knight for feeding. End the other two and we shall make our return.”** _He commanded as the black smoke covered the Knight’s body slowly infiltrating her body.

  
*****

“Hold on a second, something doesn’t add up. Jiyong can’t be on earth, he’s body’s too weak to be here right now.”

  
“I believed he had possessed a human body.”

  
“So that’s why I felt his presence three weeks ago!” exclaimed Seulgi as she continues, “I’m gonna assume he killed her but what about the other two? You didn’t even want to kill them in the first place right?”

  
“I couldn’t do it Lord Seulgi, so Lord Jiyong did it himself.”

  
“That’s why your exiled?”

  
“No, before he had killed them. He heard them crying about a child. He said he would forgive me if I go and killed the child.”

  
“This kid has nothing to with any of this though.” Seulgi stated as she pointed to the sleeping Heejin.

  
“You're right, I asked why and all he said was that it would be my penance. So, he sent me and Taeyong to kill Heejin but I couldn’t Lord Seulgi. I just couldn’t put myself to end the life of an innocent child so I attacked Taeyong when he least expected and brought Heejin away with me. We’ve been avoiding demons and slayers for weeks.”

  
“Hmm...” Deep in her thought, Seulgi decided that she would let the both of them stay with her for now as it would be the safest place.

  
“You both can stay at my place for now, we'll come up with something else later on alright?"

  
“Thank you, Lord Seulgi.” Hanbin may not look it but he was deeply grateful to her. 

  
“You don’t have to thank me and don’t call me Lord. I’m not a lord out here ya know, just Seulgi would be enough. But, there is one thing I would like to know though, why are you Mr. Poopy?”

  
Blushing from embarrassment, Hanbin scratched his nape as he confessed. “Ahh, that... Heejin didn’t know my name at first but a bird pooped on me one time while we were walking on the streets so she started calling me Poopy since then.”

*****

_‘I found them Joohyun.’_ Joohyun had been waiting all night for Seulgi but it was only that morning did she start contacting her.

  
Joohyun was on her way to the church sanctuary to pick up her new katana when she had heard of Seulgi’s voice.

  
_‘Care to tell me where you are? I’ll come over right now.’_ Joohyun said urgently as she picked up her new katana and rushed out the sanctuary.

  
_‘We’re at my apartment'_

  
_‘At your apartment?’_ Confusion clearly shown through her tone of voice.

  
_‘Listen, Joohyun. You need to calm down and don’t bring anyone with you. Things are not as it seemed, I’ll tell you when you’re here.’_

  
When Joohyun arrived, she had been exposed to the strangest scene in her life. A demon actually playing and taking care of a child.

  
She was bewildered as never in her life would she expect herself to see a demon being so friendly and caring to a human child. All her life, Joohyun had seen demons fighting, killing and ultimately devour humans. 

  
Seulgi had immediately sat her down and told her everything that happened. 

  
“He's clearly not the bad guy here Joohyun.”

  
“But he's still the reason Nayeon died.” Joohyun argued.

  
Joohyun was not close to Nayeon by all means, she had only spoke to her once and that was on the blessing ceremony for when she was to become a demon slayer. Nayeon had personally came and congratulated all the new demon slayers that day even though she had crazy schedules.

  
That one interaction she had with the Knight of Patience left her with quite the impression. She was loud, cheerful and playful. No normal person would have thought that such a person would be such a highly respected demon slayer.

  
Joohyun does not know much about how the system works in the Church of Seven Virtues as she had never went to the academy, she was taught personally by a few high ranked demon slayers- they only really thought her how to kill, nothing about how things worked in the church- but Joohyun does know that demon slayers had a ranking system.

  
There are a total of five ranks in the church and they were named after alphabetical letters -C,B,A,S- except for the highest rank, the Knight rank.

  
Sure, the S ranked demon slayers were powerful people but Knight ranked slayers were in a totally different league. There are only seven Knights, each representing the seven virtues of the church. Namely, Patience, Humility, Temperance, Diligence, Kindness, Charity and Chastity with the Knight of Humility as leader of the Seven Knights.

  
The Seven Knights were the most powerful demon slayers the church could ever offer. Each of them had to drink the sacred holy water kept in the center of sanctuary during their inauguration. The sacred holy water was said to be able to bless them with immortality and inhumane abilities.

  
She remembered the day after that night three weeks ago as clear as day. Everyone in the demon slaying world was quiet, some were mourning, some were weeping and some were furious but no one could do anything. It was common knowledge that when a demon lord appears you run -unless you’re Joohyun who does not know death- and call for back up, call for the Knights. 

  
She had heard from her mentors before that one demon lord would require at least two or three Knights to take down. The Lord of Pride however was able to go against all seven Knights by himself once during the First Holy War centuries ago and since then he had not step foot on Earth -only through possession of human bodies for a small period of time. Even though the Knights had managed to weaken him to the point where he’s body was not able to materialise in this world, he was able to kill four Knights just by himself. The only other demon lord to go against all seven at once would be the Demon Lord of Wrath when they rampaged during the Second Holy War resulting in the death thousands of demon slayers and two Knights.

  
Losing a Knight meant losing one seventh of church’s power, so asking Joohyun to forget about killing the demon who caused it was just a big WTF for her.

  
“Look, he didn’t do it alright? It was that pride bastard.”

  
“If she hadn’t been chasing him, this wouldn’t have happened Seulgi.”

  
“Sigh, try to be civil at least? For the child.” Joohyun had no choice but to concede, no child needed to see violence. 

_'Does she know?'_ She asked mentally, afraid the child would hear them.

_'Know what?'_

_'That Hanbin was the reason her parents died.'_

_'Of course not, we better keep quite about this. No need for the child to break her heart again.'_

  
Sighing, Joohyun stood up and went towards Heejin to get to know her. Heejin was not warm towards her at first since she did fought with Hanbin the night before but later warm up to her as they both found out each other liked carrot cake.


	6. Death of A Good Man

“Seulgi, can I talk with you about something?” Hanbin asked troubledly.

  
“Sure, what do you wanna talk about?” Sensing the worry written on his face, Seulgi asked Joohyun to bring Heejin to another room through telepathy.

  
“So, what is it?”

  
“I don’t think I should stay here.” 

  
“Are you saying my place isn’t comfy enough? Beggars can’t be choosers, Hanbin.” Seulgi teased, trying to lighten up the mood.

  
“No no, that’s not what I meant. It’s just I don’t think it’s safe for me to be with Heejin.” Waving both his hands frantically to deny Seulgi, Hanbin reasoned out his words.

  
“What’s not safe, you’re a strong demon and I’m a demon lord. Worst that could come is six Knights jumping on us.”

“Lord Jiyong's targeting my life too, and what if you’re not there? I don’t want an innocent child to be dragged into this mess. Her parents dying is already enough for her to deal with.”

  
“Then what do you want to do then? You can’t just leave her alone right?” 

  
“Can the church take her in?”

  
“Hmm, both her parents were high ranked demon slayers. I supposed the church would, if I remember correctly, the church has a home for orphans who lost their parents to demons.” Rubbing her chin, Seulgi recalled what she remembered of the church. While Seulgi thought that Hanbin would be capable enough to keep Heejin safe, she respected his choice.

  
“What about you then? What are you gonna do when you leave?” 

  
“I'll like to go back to _Inferno_ and remain hidden but the Gates of Pride wouldn’t open for me.”

  
“That wouldn’t be a problem, I can let you use mine.”

  
“Really? I can use your gate?”

  
Entering and leaving the _Inferno_ is not an easy task as there are only seven Gates of _Inferno_. Each gate is owned by each of the seven Demon Lords and the names of each gate would be named after their respective mortal sins. Of course, there are other means to enter the _Inferno_ without having to go through the Seven Gates of _Inferno_ but they are too risky, too dangerous. It is only through the Seven Gates of _Inferno_ that you are guaranteed to return or exit in one piece.

  
With all the seven gates being owned by the Demon Lords, no demon would be able to open the gates unless they have permission and with permission comes a contract. Demons who would like to pass through the gates would be forced to sign life bound contracts with Demon Lords swearing their loyalty. This ensured that no demon would serve under two Demon Lords at once and any betrayal will result in being banished from either the _Inferno_ or the human world. 

  
No Demon Lord would usually sign a contract with an exiled in order to avoid conflict with other Demon Lords unless the certain exiled would be able to be put to good use.

  
“You can use it Hanbin, it hasn’t been opened for more than centuries though. Don’t know if it still works.”

  
“Thank you, Seulgi” He may not look it, but Hanbin was really grateful Seulgi was willing to lend a helping hand.

  
“No need to thank me, no one even uses it anyways. But, I need a favour from you, Hanbin.”

  
“What is it?” 

  
“When you get back into the _Inferno_ , I need you to gather as much information as you can about what the other Demon Lords are doing right now.”

  
“Why? Any particular reason?”

  
“Something doesn’t feel right. I mean, from what I know, Jiyong doesn’t really come out doesn’t he? He only comes to the human world for important things.”

  
Ever since Jiyong had been injured and weakened, he had found himself a demon who would represent him for matters regarding the human world since his body would not be able to pass through the gates. 

  
Having his body weakened, Jiyong would need to feed on more human souls and sins but normal human souls would not be enough. He would need the likes of demon slayers who have strong souls or Knights who have links with the seven virtue as this provides a strong life force for them.

  
Taeyong had been chosen as Jiyong’s right hand man, the one who would represent him and collect souls and sins from the human world for him to feed on. But, that does not mean Jiyong does not appear on Earth. He only comes out of the Inferno -through possession of strong human bodies- when there are serious matters.

  
“I know a bit about this matter, Seulgi.” Hearing this, Seulgi's eyebrows had perked up.

  
“What do you know then?”

  
“I think he’s preparing for his return, it’s been almost half a millennium since he had stepped foot on Earth.” This piece of news definitely would not sit well with the church.

  
“So he's finally well enough to pass through the gates again huh, well I guess it makes sense. It's been almost five hundreds already.” 

  
“What are you gonna do, Seulgi?”

  
“What do you mean what? You think I’m going to interfere?”

  
“I mean, you are helping a demon slayer are you not?”

  
“I’m only teaching her, I’m never going to do anything for that church. They can all burn in hell for all I care.”

*****

  
Seulgi had told Joohyun about what she just talked about with Hanbin -minus Jiyong’s plans. Joohyun may not have liked Hanbin but she knew he and the human child had a strong relationship. So, she couldn’t bare to see such a beautiful relationship between a demon and a human child become broken.

  
Seulgi had suggested that they let Hanbin spent his final moments in this human world without worries and that is why, they were at a park enjoying ice cream that evening. Joohyun and Seulgi both stood at the side watching Hanbin playing tag with Heejin. 

  
“Hard for you to imagine isn’t it?”

  
“Imagine what?”

  
“That a demon and a human could actually coexist and be nice with each other.”

  
“Of course, I’ve been avoiding them all my life knowing they harm humans.”

  
“Not all of them are like this, Joohyun. Look at Hanbin, he couldn’t even bring himself to kill the people trying to kill him when he clearly overpowers them.” 

  
“It doesn’t change the fact that demons are still harmful to us humans.” Joohyun's counter was right. In fact, too right that Seulgi could only sigh. 

  
When Heejin was finally tired and stopped playing with Hanbin, Seulgi had decided she and Hanbin should take a picture together for remembrance. And so, a polaroid card with the picture of an awkward Hanbin holding the hand of a cute young Heejin was taken.

  
As beautiful as the moment was, Seulgi just could not let go of an opportunity to tease Joohyun. So, she sneaked up on her and kiss her cheeks while she took the photo with the polaroid camera she had pulled out from her dimensional pocket. 

  
“What the hell, Seulgi!” Blushing madly was quite the understatement at that moment for Joohyun as she pushed Seulgi away and slapped her forearm.

  
“Ouch! You’ve hurt me, Joo Joo! I demand a kiss!” She feigned hurt which was responded with cusses and slaps from Joohyun.

  
It did not take a genius, to know that Seulgi had a special relationship with the human girl. Hanbin thought it was just a simple teacher-student relationship like Seulgi had said but things definitely did not look and sound convincing looking at how they both interacted.

  
_‘Maybe you don’t hate the humans as much as they say, Lord Seulgi.’_

  
After a while, they had decided that Hanbin would make his departure back into the _Inferno_. They even had everything planned out, after Hanbin returns to the _Inferno_ , they were going to wipe Heejin's memories of the time she spent with him.

  
The past weeks for her were not fun to say the least, both Hanbin and Heejin had been trying to hide from demons and demon slayers alike. All they have been doing was just living in constant fear, Hanbin had wanted to bring Heejin to the slayers for her safety at first but that would just be a death wish for himself. 

  
It was a miracle that Joohyun was the one the church had sent off to fight him as he was able to bring Heejin to safety and was even given a chance to return to the _Inferno_. Sure, the _Inferno_ might be even more dangerous for him but it would not risk the lives of the innocent had Lord Jiyong sent his men to go after his life. Seulgi even gave him the permission to reside in her residence. 

  
When he asked her why she was being so nice to him, all she had to say was, “No one stays there anyways but do help me take care of my pet if you see him.”

  
“Your pet?”

  
“You’ll know what I mean when you see him.” Thinking back, Hanbin realised Seulgi was not as cruel as they say she was. He was quite young -no more than two decades old- when the Second Holy War was fought, but he had heard rumours of Lord Seulgi.

  
They say that during the war, she was so gruesome even demons were avoiding her to avoid death on the battlefield. But, looking at her easy go lucky personality made him thought otherwise. If only he was able to serve under her, maybe his life as a demon would not be so bad. 

  
“Let’s sign the contract, Hanbin.” Announced Seulgi as a Blood Pen and scroll materialised. The pen in her hand while the other floating mid-air. 

  
“Alright.” He answered as he held out his hand for Seulgi, she grabbed and injected the pen on his veins before repeating it on herself. Just when she was about to sign the contract written on the scroll, Seulgi stopped her hand midair before she pulled back and threw the pen up to the sky. The pen travelling in mid-air came to a halt when it struck an invisible body of a demon flying towards them causing the demon to groan in pain.

  
With their disguise being exposed, Taeyong and the other four demons revealed themselves flying towards them. 

  
“Taeyong!” Hanbin shouted his name when he saw Taeyong and the others as he quickly opened up his wings covering Heejin and Joohyun.

  
“Take the two of them and run, Hanbin. I’ll deal with those bastards.” Seulgi ordered, leaving Hanbin shocked.

  
“But there’s five of them!” Five of them was not the problem, the problem was each of them had wings. Taeyong having four wings was another problem -meaning he was at least at the standard of a General of a Demon Lord’s Council. All their years of cultivation combined would surely be frightening.

  
“Seven Knights on me and I’ll still be alive, Hanbin. Just get going, we still have a contract to sign later.” She retorted as she pushed him away to get him to start moving his ass. 

  
“I’ll stay with you, Seulgi. This is what I’m I supposed to do after all.” Joohyun had decided to stay with Seulgi but was rejected. 

  
“Stay with them and protect them, Hyun. I’ll send these motherfuckers back to hell and catch up with you guys later.” Seulgi actually sounded serious for once and that had surprised her.

  
“Alright, I’ll go with them.” Picking up her katana that she had placed on a bench, she ushered both Heejin and Hanbin to exit the park with her.

  
Seeing this, two of the demons from Taeyong's group flew towards them but Seulgi pulled the air with her left hand, forcing one of them to fall and slam onto the ground in pain. The other managed to escape her and chased after the other three that were escaping. 

  
“Lord Seulgi, I advise you to stop interfering us.” Taeyong said after he had landed. 

  
“And I suggest you lot to go back to hell or I’m gonna have to help you with that.”

  
“I don’t want to fight you, there’s no need for blood to be shed amongst demons.” 

  
“You’re really starting to sound like Pride himself now and if there really is no need for blood shed, why are you after Hanbin?” 

  
“It’s simple, a traitor to the demon race must be executed.” Taeyong answered brandishing his spear smirking proudly, he had never really like Hanbin -he believed he was way better than Hanbin- but the Lord of Pride seemed to favour Hanbin, always forgiving him whenever he failed to accomplish Lord Jiyong’s wishes. He can finally get rid of that pest now, of course he would be delighted.

  
“Man, your thoughts are nasty Taeyong. I think you should read the Bible more, learn to forgive ya know.” Seulgi said which maddened him, how dare she read his mind.

  
“I swear, you’re really starting to sound like Pride and I don’t know whether that’s good for you or not.” She continued to spit out sarcastically. 

  
“Shut up!” Shouted Taeyong as he jumped forward with his spear in hand to thrust Seulgi but it was all for naught as Seulgi walked through him. 

  
He turned back to see her walking towards the two winged demons who had been standing behind him with frightened expressions on their faces, their legs shaking as they slowly positioned themselves in a fighting stance. One with a sword, the other with a halberd.

  
“What are you two doing? Attack her!” He ordered as he rushed toward Seulgi again. The tip of the golden spear in his right hands combusted with flames in the shape of a dragon’s head. 

  
Before he reached her, Seulgi had already walked over to the one with a sword. Too stunned to do a thing, he did not react at all except for his constantly shaking body due to fear when Seulgi grabbed onto his right forearm. 

  
When Taeyong was half way there, she threw the demon at him making them both clash causing the fire from the tip of Taeyong’s spear to explode and consume the demon in hell fire.

  
_**“I don’t think you know your place, Taeyong.”**_ When Taeyong looked up to her from the ground, it was not just the voice that changed. Seulgi’s left eye was glowing crimson red with small black flames on the left side of her forehead similar to that of a demon's horn.

*****

“Heejin, grab onto Hanbin!” Joohyun yelled as Hanbin carried her and opened up his wings, he started flying as they run from the demon chasing after them.

  
Joohyun mentally prayed as the sheath of her katana glowed in orange hues, she turned around quickly spreading her left leg while the right acted as the anchor. She drew out her blade and immediately, two waves of sword beams were flying in a criss-cross pattern to the chasing demon who was a bit too slow to react on time. 

  
The sword beams exploded upon contact causing the demon to be pushed back backward and fall.

  
_‘I knew it! That was a strong prayer! Seulgi was just too strong!’_ Joohyun mentally cheered on herself as she turned back to catch up with Hanbin and Heejin but the demon from behind did not give up as he started flying again.

  
Suddenly, Joohyun’s cell phone started ringing as they reached the streets. She took out her phone to see Yerim calling her while cussing, “Of all times, Yerim! Why now!” 

  
Even though she was cussing, she still picked up the phone call. 

  
“Yah! This better be important! Kim Yerim!”

  
“Unnie, is that you running from a demon!” Yerim on the other side of the call shouted and from the looks of it, she must be running as while.

  
“Are you here!” Taking a quick look around her peripheral, Joohyun spotted Yerim with a group of people -six people to be exact including Yerim. It turns out that they were demon slayers with a few high ranked ones even -Joohyun noticed Jeongyeon who was a S ranked close to the level of a Knight. 

  
A few of them drew their weapons but Yerim was the fastest to act as her twin revolvers have already started shooting out bullets at the demon. 

  
“You guys take care of this one, I’ll deal with the one carrying the child.” Jeongyeon ordered as she pulled away from the group sprinting towards Hanbin and Heejin. Seeing Jeongyeon going for Hanbin, Joohyun ran after her to try and stop her from killing him.

  
“Everything will be okay, Heejin. Don’t cry alright?” Hanbin could feel it, someone strong was following them. He looked back to see a demon slayer coming after him and Joohyun chasing right behind. The glocks in her hands started firing strings and strings of bullets aimed accurately at him.

  
Hanbin tried to dodge the bullets but unfortunately he had to tank some of them as he did not want to risk Heejin getting hurt. He took a quick look behind him, only to see four pitch black chains with spear end tips coming at him.

  
‘What the! How does she have that!” Hanbin was too slow to react as the four chains speared and pierced him. Two on each of his wings and two on each legs. As he fell while screaming in pain, he hands were too weak resulting in losing his grip on Heejin but fortunately Joohyun was fast enough to catch her.

  
With Hanbin chained to the ground, Jeongyeon was finally able to catch up. 

  
“You filthy demon, taking a child as hostage is just cruel!” She said while pointing her glock on Hanbin's forehead.

  
“Stop it, Jeongyeon! He didn’t do harm at all, he was trying to protect her from the other demons!” Turning to the side to look at Joohyun, Jeongyeon looked at Joohyun as if she had grew another head.

  
“Are you out of your mind? A demon protecting a human child? Bullshit.” 

  
“It’s true! I was with them!” 

  
“Even if it’s true, a demon is still a demon.” Looking over at Hanbin pierced by the chains, Joohyun saw him mouthing _‘It’s okay.’_ over and over again trying to reassure her that he was fine. Seeing as there were no response from Joohyun, Jeongyeon changed her ammunition to a Star Killer.

  
“Go back to hell demon.” Jeongyeon said before she blew his head off.

  
“Hanbin!” Heejin cried out as Joohyun hug her tight shielding her from seeing Hanbin getting killed by Jeongyeon.

  
_‘So you do know my name huh?’_ Hanbin smiled to himself as he tighten his grip on the polaroid card with the picture he took earlier with Heejin. As he head was blown off, his body started burning until the whole body was pulverised.

*****

When Seulgi found Joohyun, it was at night and Joohyun was sitting on a curb by the road. 

  
“I’m sorry, Joohyun.” Joohyun did not blame Seulgi, she could not bring herself to. Not when Seulgi had stalled time for them, not when she had nothing to do with Hanbin’s death. She felt like she was responsible for his death, that she was not strong enough.

  
After Hanbin’s death, Yerim and the other slayers arrived minutes later to see a crying Heejin with a Joohyun trying to pacify her. The poor child was crying and screaming for Hanbin. 

  
Yerim had wanted to ask Joohyun who was Hanbin but felt that it was not an appropriate time to ask. When Heejin finally lost her consciousness due to exhaustion, they carried her back to the sanctuary to carry out a memory wipe on her. The church had decided to put her in the children’s home seeing as her parents were both demon slayers before their passing.

  
“It’s not your fault Seulgi.” Joohyun voice quivered as tears started forming and dropping onto her lap. She felt Seulgi slowly pulling her into an embrace and for the first time, being with Seulgi felt warm.

  
“I-i felt like I failed to save her even when I did, Seulgi.” Joohyun cried as she continue to express her confusion and disappointment in herself to Seulgi.

  
That night, holding Joohyun in her embrace. Seulgi swore to herself, that whatever may happen from now on. She would protect and make sure Joohyun would never ever, cry again.

  
  



	7. Yerim's Discovery

It was after a week that Joohyun had finally stopped blaming herself for Hanbin's death, she even visited Heejin a few days ago but she had completely forgotten who Joohyun was. 

  
“So, Joohyun unnie...” 

  
“Hmm?” 

  
“When are you taking another request?” Yerim asked as they walked down the halls of the church's sanctuary. She has been staying at Joohyun's place for two weeks now and she has not even done a single thing about her field research. Her report was due the next two weeks so she was really starting to worry.

  
“I’m thinking maybe tomorrow. That is, if there are any requests from the church.” Joohyun replied. She was honestly thinking of taking one that day but she just was not feeling it.

  
“Why are you asking, Yerim?” Curious as to why Yerim was suddenly interested in her schedule, she decided to ask Yerim.

  
“It’s just you know, I only have two weeks left before my report’s due.”

  
_‘Ah, so it’s about her field research.’_ Joohyun thought to herself before she replied, “Should I just take a two weeks leave?” teasing Yerim.

  
“Come on! Don’t do this to me please?” Yerim pleaded with an _aegyo_ voice before she was slapped on the forearm by Joohyun telling her to stop.

  
“I’ll see if there’s any tomorrow night so stop now, alright?” If there’s anything about Yerim's _aegyo_ , it's that it was even worse than Seulgi's.

  
“Can it be in the afternoon? I only have classes in the morning.”

  
Yerim wanted to do it in afternoon so she could laze around all night. Who would want to do anything tiring at night anyways but, Joohyun had a different mindset. She much preferred to hunt demons at night as they are prone to be more active during the night and the risk of the general public getting involved at night would be lower compared to during the day. Although the city never sleeps, there would not be as much people going about at night time.

  
“I don’t like hunting for demons during the day, Yerim. It’s better to do it at night.”

  
“Sigh, okay then.” Sighing dejectedly, Yerim could only concede to Joohyun.

  
“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask, Yerim. What were you doing with Jeongyeon and the others last week?” Joohyun had been wondering what Yerim was doing with a bunch of high ranked demon slayers especially the likes of Jeongyeon who was a candidate to replace Nayeon.

  
“You mean when we helped you kill the demon that day? They were out on a mission and I was just tagging along, I’m actually quite close with a few of them.”

  
“You’re close friends with them?”

  
“Yeah, epsecially Jeongyeon _unnie_ and Saeron.” Joohyun had heard of Saeron as well, -from Sooyoung when she was gossiping as usual- she was quite an excellent rank A demon slayer who was catching up on the other rank S slayers in a very fast pace.

  
Although Saeron was a few years younger than her and had only started out for not more than two years, she was a young prodigy who excelled in all aspects during her academy years. When Saeron first started out as a demon slayer, she was already doing solo hunts. There were even rumours that in a year's time, she would be ascending to rank S.

  
Normally, the estimated time for an individual to reach rank S in their time serving as a demon slayer would be ten years and this includes being very talented and graduating at the top of the church’s academy. When a demon slayer wants to ascend to another rank, they have to do certain missions or hunts to prove that they are worthy. 

  
In the system, every single demon slayer has their own credit points for how many requests and hunts they took part and contributed to. The requests are categorized into different tiers for different demons, so different requests reward different credit points. 

  
Although the demons do not have ranks amongst themselves, the church however, does classify the demons into a tier list. Demons like Hanbin who have wings would be considered tier two demons and the likes of Taeyong -ones that have four wings- would be classified as tier one. As for Demon Lords, they were not put into the tier list as one Demon Lord by themselves would have been classified as a national level threat.

  
When the credit limit for a demon slayer's rank reaches its limits -the limit increases with each rank- the individual is eligible to take a special mission to upgrade their respective rank. For example, a rank C demon slayer would need to go for a solo mission if they want to ascend to rank B. All Saeron needs to do after she reaches the limit is to take on a tier one demon for her to ascend to rank S.

  
“How are you so close with them, the both of them have been demon slayers for years especially Jeongyeon, doesn’t she have five to six years under her belt?”

  
“We all came from the same orphan home.” 

  
“Oh...” Joohyun dragged her word feeling as though she might have touched a sensitive topic.

  
“It’s okay, it doesn’t really bother me that much. I've found a good family from that orphan home.” Yerim smiled as she recounted the times she had spent with Jeongyeon, Saeron and Nayeon at the orphan home the church owned.

  
The group of four started with Nayeon and Jeongyeon who had arrived around the same time. The both of them were already close friends with each other before Saeron had been sent to live with them in the same orphan home. The last to arrive would be Yerim. There was also a Seohyun _unnie_ who acted as a big sister of the group but she had left the orphan home not long after Yerim had joined them so Yerim does not remember much of her.

  
“How come every one of them are prodigies, becoming demon slayers at such young ages and yet you’re still stuck at the academy at sixteen?”

  
“Hey! That hurt my feelings!” Yerim slapped Joohyun’s forearm dramatically before the both of them laughed.

  
“It’s because I only started attending the academy last year. I’ll be graduating in a few months.” 

  
“Then, you’re quite the smart one aren’t you.” Truth be told, even though Yerim was a clutz -she somehow always mess up the things in their now shared apartment- Yerim was quite the prodigy herself. 

  
Joining the church academy at the age of fifteen, Yerim was able to outclass every same year student -even the senior students sometimes- in terms of physicality and mentality but not academically. Her most outstanding talent would be her eyes, Yerim had been dubbed as the ‘Golden Eye' by her peers because of her extremely accurate shooting.

  
Some of her mentors and teachers would even go as far to say that she had the exact same style as Nayeon -who was the number one marksman demon slayer- but Yerim would beg to differ. Sure, her shooting was taught by none other than the Holy Knight herself but Yerim prefers to play dirty sometimes. 

  
While Nayeon and most sharpshooter demon slayers would prefer to use twin revolvers, Yerim prefered to use only one -though since the passing of Nayeon, Yerim had been trying to go twin revolver style- while letting her other hand roam free with different grenades from her weapons arsenal. Sometimes if she feels like it, Yerim would bring along a grenade launcher, most preferably, one like a m79 -a single-shot, shoulder-fired, break action grenade launcher - with the flip up sight removed.

  
With the crazy smokes and light explosions from her grenades paired with her extremely accurate golden eye, Yerim dominated the whole academy whenever they hold sparring matches or demon hunts for exams.

  
“Of course I am, _unnie_! Only you don’t know how good I am.” Yerim retorted smugly.

*****

“Well, what do you want Yerim? Ice cream or waffles?” Saeron asked as they make their way across the street.

  
“Hmm, I’m thinking chocolate ice cream but chocolate waffles sounds good too...” 

  
“Then should we get bot-" Before Saeron could even finish her sentence, Yerim pulled her aside to hide behind a signboard.

  
“Yah! What the hell, Yerim!” Saeron shouted but was quickly hushed by Yerim before she pointed her index finger to a certain direction in front of them. 

  
“What?” Saeron asked looking at the direction Yerim was pointing, there was nothing to see except for two women walking together.

  
“That’s the Joohyun _unnie_ I was talking about, Saeron.” Yerim spoke in a hushed tone as she dragged Saeron with her to follow Joohyun.

  
“So? What about it? You better have a good reason cause we’re missing out ice cream for this.” 

  
“I thought you said both?” Yerim turned her head to look at Saeron in disbelieve.

  
“I kinda only want ice cream right now.” Saeron answered smiling sheepishly. Yerim was about to open her mouth and respond when she remembered the issue at hand.

  
“Aish! Stop distracting me Saeron! We have an important issue here!” 

  
“What important issue? She’s probably just going on a date with her girlfriend.” Saeron would like this as well, whenever Yerim would ask her to hang out, she would pretend they were having a date. Turning her head to look at Saeron again, Yerim gave her a WTF look.

  
“Are you blind? That’s a demon she’s walking with!” With her eyes wide, Saeron turned to look at the two women they were currently following.

  
“What do you mean demon? I don’t see anything demon about her.” Demon? The person walking beside the ‘Joohyun _u_ _nnie_ ’ definitely looked human to her.

  
“Kim Saeron, do you believe in me! Me and my golden eyes!” Yerim squished both of Saeron's cheeks and pulled her face to look at her. 

  
“Ermm, yeah?”

  
“Then that woman walking with Joohyun unnie definitely is a demon!” Yerim said as she tried to convince Saeron.

*****

“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this! You said we're having waffles!” Seulgi was frustrated that Joohyun had lied to her. 

  
“Ow come on! I’ll treat you to ice cream later alright? Just shut up for now.” Hearing the word ‘ice cream’ made her ears perked up and eyes twinkled but her expression turn into a smugly smirk.

  
“But Joo Joo! I want you to kiss me! I don’t want ice cream!” She turned to Joohyun and threw a tantrum trying to tease Joohyun only to get a few slaps on the forearm in return with a “Yah!” 

  
Meanwhile at the back, Yerim was cringing from the ‘Joo Joo' while Saeron was admiring them. Oh, how she wished that could be her and Yerim one day. If only Yerim would not be so caught up in becoming a demon slayer then maybe they could have something like this. 

  
“Where are we going anyways.” Seulgi asked as they turn a corner to see an abandoned block of building.

  
“Apparently, here.” Joohyun announced as they step outside the abandoned building. 

  
Apparently, just after Joohyun and Yerim had went their separate ways -Yerim to the academy while Joohyun to get her breakfast- Joohyun received a request from the church to help clear a group of demons residing in an abandoned building.

  
Joohyun had asked Sooyoung to join her at first, but Sooyoung was busy doing other things so it left her to no choice but to ask Seulgi for help. Knowing Seulgi would not easily comply to her, she tricked Seulgi with waffles.

  
“You know what you’re up against?”

  
“Kind of, they did give me a list of their tiers.” Joohyun explained while looking at the list provided by the church on her phone, “Three tier two and five tier four.” 

  
“You sure? I’m seeing around ten demons.” Seulgi asked as she squinted her eyes looking up the building. 

  
“You know what? I’m just gonna believe you on this.” The church has been giving the wrong information these days -Joohyun was not supposed to be on the mission to hunt Hanbin as she has not even reach rank A but after the incident, the church decided her rank would be raised from B to A- and Seulgi’s a demon lord, she should be able to know the exact numbers of demons up there then.

  
“I’m picking ‘Chocolate Forest' later.” Seulgi announced before she stepped back to take a huge leap into the third floor of the building, breaking the windows.

  
_‘Whatever happened to no helping and only teaching?’_ Annoyed, Joohyun asked as she started running into the building. A shout of “The faster we finish, the faster we get ice cream, Joo Joo!” is what she heard in return.

*****

Yerim and Saeron decided to follow them into the building because Yerim just could not believe her eyes that a demon was actually helping a demon slayer to kill... demons? What the hell was going on! 

  
The both of them hid behind a large pile of debris as they watch the scene before them unfold itself. Seulgi was toying with the demons as she grabbed and threw them around like Teddy bears. Joohyun on the other hand was actually trying to kill the demons, saying her prayers every now and then.

  
“This Joohyun _unnie_ of yours is not bad at all.” Saeron was impressed with Joohyun’s performance but Yerim was only focusing on Seulgi. Before the both of them knew, a winged demon had escape from Seulgi and Joohyun’s range. The demon saw the both of them hiding behind the pile of debris and decided to jump on them.

  
“Yerim, look out!” Saeron shouted as she quickly grabbed a broken metal pipe from the ground to smack the demon. 

  
_‘Pray, Diligence! Strength! Tenfold!’_ With her quick and short prayer finished, the pipe glowed a hue of red and before the demon realised, she had jumped out from behind the debris to swing it at him.

  
“So you two have finally decided to show yourselves?” Seulgi who had been toying the other demons turned to look at both Saeron and Yerim straight in eyes.

What they did not know was that the whole time they were following Seulgi and Joohyun, the both of them have been aware of the two youngsters following them. So, Seulgi decided to let a demon escape to make the two of them reveal themselves.

Looking at Seulgi in the eyes, all Yerim and Saeron could do was gulp nervously.


	8. The Best Friend

With the cat out of the bag now, Saeron and Yerim had no choice but to help Seulgi and Joohyun kill the group of demons. Yerim did not have a gun with her but it does not mean she does not know how to fight melee so she too, picked up a broken pipe to fight.

  
While the three of them -Joohyun, Saeron, Yerim- were doing their best to survive and kill the bunch of demons, Seulgi had took it upon herself to take the back seat and do nothing. When Joohyun turned to look at her, all she saw was a Seulgi enjoying a bag of chips seating on a pile of debris while the other two were trying their best to survive this mess.

  
“What happened to helping, Seulgi!” Her blade glowing bright red stabbing into a winged demon's heart as she shouted out clearly pissed at Seulgi for doing nothing to help the situation. 

  
“You got two helpers now, Joo Joo!” was Seulgi’s response as she continued to stuff more chips into her mouth.

  
“What’s with this Joo Joo thing? It’s very cringey!” Yerim complained from the other side of the big spacious room as the glowing bright red pipe from her hands smacked onto a demon's head, smashing it in the process.

  
“It’s her nickname! Cute, right!” Seulgi answered enthusiastically.

  
“Don’t listen to her, Yer-" Remembering that demons should definitely not be able to know their names, Joohyun stopped speaking out Yerim’s name before she continued.

  
“She’s saying that so my name doesn’t get revealed!”

  
“And Joo Joo was the best you could come up with!” Yerim criticised but Saeron on the other hand thought differently, Joo Joo sounded adorable to her. If only Yerim could come up with something adorable to call her.

  
“Then call me something else!” 

  
“Just your name should be enough.” The demon she was currently fighting with interjected before Joohyun told her to shut the fuck up and slashed her head off.

  
“Then what do you want me to call you!” 

  
Suddenly remembering that advertisement banner she saw while walking into the park last week, Joohyun answered Yerim. 

  
“Irene! Call me that!” 

  
“Irene...huh...” Seulgi dazed as her hand reached into the plastic bag only to find out she had finished her chips. 

  
“Alright, my chips are finished! Finish them quickly and let’s go for ice cream! Joo Joo's buying!” She jumped off the debris dusting off her hands.

  
“Joo Joo! Let’s finish this quickly! Myemim! Ronnie! Come on, finish them off quick!” 

  
“Who the hell is Ronnie/Myemim!” Both Saeron and Yerim shouted as they finish off the remaining three demons.

  
“Isn’t it obvious? Myemim is the shorty and Ronnie is the tall one. Don’t like Ronnie? How about Ronsae?” Seulgi pondered aloud and next thing she knew was a broken pipe flying straight for her face. Of course, Seulgi was not fazed as she simply grabbed it the moment it was within reach. 

  
Yerim snatched the broken pipe from Saeron's hand as she rushed toward Seulgi, the metal pipe in her hands glowed purple hues as she blinked to Seulgi’s left side. Seulgi saw through her trick as she turned to look at her the moment Yerim appeared beside her.

  
Having quick reflexes, Yerim blinked to the other side but was once again saw through by Seulgi who grabbed onto her pipe and threw it on the floor. 

  
“Why are you targeting me?” Seulgi asked as she gave Yerim a deadpanned look.

  
“Joohyun unnie, care to explain why you’re with a demon?” 

  
“Why not?” Seulgi smirked looking at Yerim straight in the eyes.

*****

They ended up with Seulgi dragging a raging Yerim biting her hand as they walked over to an ice cream parlour. Their crazy actions brought a lot of attention when they first entered the shop, Seulgi had to sit Yerim down and asked Saeron to take care of her before she could even go and order her ice cream.

  
“So, care to explain why you were following us now?” Joohyun asked while licking her yogurt flavoured ice cream.

  
“Hmph!” Still fuming, Yerim crossed her arms as she looked to the side ignoring Joohyun.

  
“Yerim saw you walking with Seulgi and dragged me to follow you guys.” Saeron answered for her instead.

  
“Yah! We should be ignoring them!”

  
“She paid for the ice cream you’re eating, idiot.” Retorted Saeron as she shoved a spoonful of mint chocolate flavoured ice cream into Yerim’s mouth.

  
“Huh, that doesn’t make any sense. You saw us then decided to follow us?” Perking her eyebrow, Joohyun asked confused.

  
“It's because I’m a demon isn’t it?” Seulgi who has been silently enjoying her ‘Chocolate Forest' flavoured ice cream while listening to their conversation decided to intercept. She gave Yerim who was sitting opposite her a smug look knowing it would tick her off.

  
“Yah! What are you looking at you filthy demon!” Waving her spoon, Yerim cussed out at Seulgi.

  
“Oh my, Myemim.” Seulgi covered her mouth with a hand before continuing, “Filthy is a strong word, that hurt me.” Her hand now touching her heart acting hurt.

  
“Don’t bother her, she has crazy tendencies sometimes.” Joohyun said as she looked at Seulgi and her crazy antics again.

  
“Don’t act like you don’t like it, Joo Joo! I know you loved it when I kissed you that day!” Seulgi gave Joohyun a wink but was given a slap on the forearm in return from a blushing Joohyun.

  
Seeing Seulgi's smile while teasing Joohyun and Joohyun’s embarrassed responses irked Yerim. No human and demon should be interacting like this, it just does not feel right for her so she stood up and stormed out of the ice cream parlour not giving a damn about the others.

  
“I-I'm so sorry about Yerim, she just... really hates demons.” Saeron apologised before she went out to chase after Yerim.

  
“Joohyun.”

  
Still stunned by the turn of events, Joohyun only responded Seulgi after a few seconds with a “What.”

  
“Nothing. Just, take care of her.”

  
“Take care of who?” Joohyun replied before she turned to look at Seulgi, confused.

  
“Yerim, she has an affinity for darkness. I can feel it.” was Seulgi's reply but it made no sense to Joohyun.

*****

“Yerim! Wait up!” Saeron yelled as she ran towards the fuming Yerim. Looking back to see Saeron running behind her, Yerim stopped walking to let her catch up.

  
“Yah! Why did you just walked out like that!” Saeron scolded as she tried to catch her breath. Yerim ignored her and decided to walk again, back to her shared apartment with Joohyun.

  
“Hey, are you even listening to me!” Saeron shouted into her ears which made Yerim jumped from shock.

  
“What was that for!” Yerim shouted back, clearly annoyed at Saeron.

  
“I said, you were very rude just now.” 

  
“Why would I be rude? That was a demon we were dealing with. How is talking like that to a demon rude? I swear, if only I had my revolver with me.” Yerim retorted, regretting not bringing her revolver with her after her classes that day.

  
“There must be a reason for this.” Saeron tried to reason with Yerim.

  
“Reason my ass, what do you think Joohyun’s gonna say? This demon is teaching me how to kill other demons? Don’t make me laugh, Saeron.”

  
Apparently, whatever Yerim had said that afternoon was right. When Joohyun had explained to her about her situation that night, Yerim was left with a big WTF after Joohyun’s explanation.

  
“So, she has an agreement with the church to not mess with each other?” Yerim asked, completely flabbergasted as to how the church even had such an agreement with a demon.

  
“Yup.”

  
“And she’s a demon lord?” Another nod from Joohyun confirmed her question.

  
“And she has a contract with you to teach you how to kill demons?” Joohyun nodded again and Yerim was livid.

  
“What the hell! That makes no fucking sense!” 

  
“Watch your language, young lady!” Joohyun scolded before she continued, “Look, as long as she’s not bringing any harm to us I don’t think there’s anything to worried about, Yerim.”

  
It was not that Yerim was worried or anything, she just hated them. She hated the demons so much it could be considered one of her reasons to live another day after the tragic incidents in her life.

  
Yerim had a loving family growing up. Her parents only gave unconditional love to her and her three younger sisters, never a single condemn. Life was bright and everything was perfect, perfect until a demon had decided to mess with their lives. 

  
He took away the family love and replace them with temptations to her parents, her parents were strong people -she would like to believe- but the demon’s prowess was just too strong.

  
Like any other demon slayer, Yerim was able to see pass demons at a young age. She had warned her parents of the strange creatures but they never believed and that was how the whole loving started changing.

  
Unconditional love turned into condemn, turned into abuse, turned into hate. Even until their last breaths, her once loving parents condemned her for their death as they burn and die slowly, to be eaten by a demon.

  
_‘I'll save you for last and let you watch me eat them, how about it?’_

  
Those were the exact words the demon had said as he smiled chillingly at her ten year old self. There was nothing Yerim could do, she tried to punch, kick and even bite him but it was all for nought as the ten year old watched her siblings and parents get eaten up by the demon.

  
It was only when he finished her youngest sister when the demon slayers arrived, Taeyeon the great Knight of Humility had personally came to her rescue letting her twin dogs run wild biting the demon’s head off as they feast on his body. Later on, Yerim was put into the orphan home managed and run by Taeyeon.

  
“Easy for you to say, do you even see how you blush so much when she teases you each time? You disgust me _unnie_.” Yerim acted as if she was very disgusted by Joohyun’s actions that afternoon.

  
“Y-yah! What are you talking about! It’s not like I like her or anything!” 

Just when Joohyun was about to stand up and slap Yerim on her forearm, they heard a knock on the door. The both of them turned to look each other in the eyes, wondering who would be knocking on the apartment so late at night. 

  
“You go or I go?” Joohyun asked and Yerim immediately answered, “You, it’s your apartment.” 

  
Sighing, Joohyun walked over to the door and opened the door to see her best friend -slash maybe crush?- with a surprised look on her face. 

  
“Seungwan?”

  
“Surprise....” 

*****

“So, why is there one more person with us tonight?” Seulgi asked clearly annoyed of the presence of a certain some -or what Seulgi would like to call, a nuisance- standing so close to Joohyun as she had her arm looped around Seungwan's.

  
“Hi, I’m Wendy. You must be Seulgi right?” Seungwan smiled politely as she held out a hand for Seulgi to shake.

  
“I don’t shake hands with demon slayers.” Seulgi gave a look to the hand before her eyes turned to look Seungwan in the eyes with a glare.

  
Yerim who was standing at the side was ecstatic and laughing to herself at the annoyed Seulgi. In the beginning when Seulgi had arrived at their location, she wore a shit eating grin on her face as she looked at Yerim but her expression turned sour the moment she saw Joohyun clinging onto another person.

  
“Okay...” putting her hands back to her side awkwardly, Seungwan answered Seulgi’s previous question.

  
“I’m actually sent by the high officials to keep a look out on you.” 

  
Seungwan had explained all this to Joohyun and Yerim that night when she arrived at her shared apartment with Joohyun -she forgotten where she had placed her keys hence why she was knocking on the door.

  
Apparently, Seungwan had been transferred to a branch in another city but was ordered by the church council -the Knights- to come back to the city to monitor Seulgi as Seulgi has been seen to be interacting with a certain demon slayer far too much lately.

  
However, that was not the only reason Seungwan was back in the city. She had another reason to be here as she was on a mission to investigate a case. It seemed that a lot of demon slayers and citizens have gone missing these past week and something does not feel right.

  
So Seungwan, who was to be the next Knight of Patience was asked to come back to the city to solve the case and monitor Seulgi along the way to see if she has been doing anything suspicious.

  
“Basically a watch dog.” Hearing Seulgi’s rude words, Joohyun removed herself from clinging to Seungwan to give Seulgi a slap on the forearm. 

  
“Yah! Why are you so rude to Wannie!” She complained to Seulgi who stuck her tongue out at her. 

  
“Why are you so clingy to her then!” Seulgi retorted, “Why don’t you cling on to me then!” 

  
“What the, why would I!” Joohyun shouted back blushing. Something felt weird, shouldn’t she be feeling giddy when she clung onto Seungwan but why did she not feel it just now but when Seulgi mentioned clinging on to her, she felt all weird and funny.

  
“Have they always been like this?” Seungwan asked Yerim who was laughing at the two of them. She turned to look at Seungwan before nodding.

  
“As far as I know, Seulgi likes to tease Joohyun and Joohyun acts like a _tsundere_ when she does it.” Yerim explained, although she is not close with Seungwan for now but having her around to annoy Seulgi seemed like a good thing for Yerim.

  
“Joohyun, shouldn’t you be on a mission right now?” seeing as there was not much time for them to waste, Seungwan reminded Joohyun. 

  
“Oh, right! Thanks for reminding, Wannie!” The way Joohyun had said it with a sweet voice made Seulgi cringed. 

  
“Ew, I didn’t know you had it in you to act so gross Joo Joo.” And a slap to her forearm was the obvious respond she would get in return.

*****

“Hey, Seulgi. Can I ask you something?” Seungwan asked after they finished off the last demon that night.

  
“What? You’re already asking me a question, WANnie.” Seulgi emphasised the ‘Wan’ as she asked back.

  
“Why are you doing this? Why are you helping Joohyun?”

  
“It’s simple, it’s none of your business.” Seulgi responded with as much sass as she could spit out before moving away from Seungwan.

  
“Just ignore her, Wannie. Seulgi usually isn't like this, maybe she’s just having a bad day.” Joohyun came to her side to reassure her.

  
“Then how is she usually like?” Seungwan had to ask everything she could know about Seulgi as she had a report to make.

  
“Usually? She likes to play around and tease people.” 

  
“Especially her Joo Joo.” Yerim who passed by them to get out of the house chipped in. Although she may not like Seulgi, seeing a flustered Joohyun was always funny.

  
“Y-yah! Kim Yerim!” and off Joohyun goes, to chase after Yerim leaving a clueless Seungwan standing there by herself.

  
Whatever this was, Yerim was sure as hell things would be interesting from then on.


	9. The Mage

“So, we’re heading for district A next.” Seungwan announced as she looked at the list from her phone.

  
The five of them -Seungwan, Joohyun, Seulgi, Yerim and Saeron- were going through different districts of the city. When Seungwan mentioned that she would be going to different parts of the city to investigate on the missing citizens and demon slayers, Joohyun had decided to help out and Seulgi wanted to tag along. Yerim on the other hand took this as an opportunity to get a first-hand experience on how a Knight level -given Seungwan did not have her inauguration yet- demon slayer worked. Saeron did not have anything to do that day so she decided to tag along to spend time with Yerim.

  
“Alright, Wannie. Let’s move along everyone!” Joohyun nodded to Seungwan before telling them to move.

  
“What’s with Seulgi?” Saeron who had been observing the three of them -Seulgi, Joohyun, Seungwan- quietly asked Yerim.

  
“I don’t know, maybe Seulgi’s jealous.” Yerim responded as she laughed to herself. Served her right, the demon should not be happy with a human. Saeron on the contrary thought it was quite saddening. 

  
The whole time they were going through the city from district B to district C, Seulgi had been grumbling nonstop about how Joohyun had been doing nothing but giving her undivided attention to Seungwan. 

  
“Joo Joo! Your gayness disgusts me!” That was it, Seulgi had enough of Joohyun clinging onto Seungwan the whole day like the hopeless lesbian she was. So, she picked up a small stone and threw it at Joohyun. Of course, not too hard or Joohyun might end up getting send to the hospital.

“What the hell, Seulgi!” Joohyun looked back to see Seulgi sticking her tongue out at her. Seulgi knew throwing the stone would piss her off but hey, at least now Joohyun has her attention on Seulgi. 

  
While on the side, Saeron who was watching them thought they were cute. Seulgi who was jealous of Seungwan and wanted nothing but Joohyun’s attention was grinning widely just because she finally caught her attention. She was just too cute for her not to gush over.

  
_‘I’m rooting for you, Seulgi! Fighting!’_ She silently cheered before the thought of her actually supporting a demon caught up to her. 

  
_‘What was I thinking? Kim Saeron! You gotta stop watching those romance fantasy dramas!’_ She scolded herself before moving to walk beside Yerim. 

  
As they arrived at district A, the atmosphere felt different. It felt strange and gloomy of some sort but to Seulgi, it reeked of sins. 

  
“Gosh, this places reeks of sins!” Seulgi exclaimed as they looked around the area. Seungwan who heard what Seulgi had just said moved toward her.

  
“You think so too? Any ideas, Seulgi?” Having a person standing so close to you invading your personal space was not Seulgi’s cup of tea, especially when you are Son Seungwan. 

  
“Don't touch me!” Seulgi yelled as she backed off from Seungwan. “I’m a Demon Lord, Seungwan. Of course, I would know a place filled with sinners.” 

  
“So... any ideas then?” God damn it, god damn Seungwan and her pair of puppy eyes that were sparkling. Seulgi hated the fact that Joohyun liked Seungwan so much and even more so when Seungwan was just so pure. Seungwan had such a strong and pure soul that it was quite the disgusting sight for Seulgi.

  
“It isn’t just sins, there’s dark energy mixed in. I can’t really pinpoint where though.” Seulgi answered as she tried to avoid looking Seungwan in the eyes. 

  
“Dark energy? The church didn’t say anything about dark energy.” Shit, now Seungwan was intrigued and she seemed to really be irking Seulgi as she inched closer and closer to Seulgi. 

  
“Son Seungwan! Please respect Seulgi’s personal space!” Thank god Joohyun decided to budge in between the both them or Seulgi might really just punch Seungwan.

  
Things had been going on like this for the past few days since Seungwan had announced to Seulgi that she would be monitoring her. Seulgi would be jealous of Seungwan who had Joohyun’s attention but Seungwan only cared about Seulgi as she occasionally invaded her personal space and wanted to get to know her more and more. Joohyun would try to separate Seungwan from Seulgi, and Yerim? Yerim would just be on the side laughing at the spectacle.

  
“Are you sure Joohyun _unnie_ really likes Seungwan _unnie_?” Saeron who was baffled at the sight asked Yerim.

  
“I don’t know and I don’t care but they’re quite entertaining though.” Yerim answered but deep down, she kind of knew the answer to Saeron’s question and she did not like the answer. Sure, Joohyun liked to cling onto Seungwan but whenever someone even tried to do anything with Seulgi, Joohyun would suddenly act defensive and separate them from her. 

  
There was even an instance where they were asking around a neighbourhood about people who were missing and there was one lady who tried to get close and flirt with Seulgi. Joohyun who been clinging onto Seungwan immediately turned on her defensive mode. Surprisingly, Seulgi who had wanted nothing but Joohyun’s attention did not realised Joohyun’s defensive tendencies at all. Well, all the more entertainment for Yerim then.

  
Does Joohyun really have feelings for Seungwan? Yerim does not know, she never said anything about it but if Yerim were to choose who she would support, it would be Seungwan just because she was human.

  
“Anyways, I think there has to be something to do with this.” Seulgi said after she had calmed down.

  
“What do you mean, Seulgi?” At this point, it seemed that only Seungwan and Seulgi had been serious about this whole thing.

  
“I’m talking about the sudden missing of so many people and this dark energy reeked district. A mage might be holding a ritual for all I know.” Seulgi explained to Seungwan as she pondered about the possibilities.

  
“A mage?” Joohyun asked, surprised by the sudden talk about mages.

  
She had known about mages -a bit at least- as Seungwan had told her about them before. 

  
Just like there were demon slayers who uphold the virtues of heaven and serve justice to demons, there were also mages who worship the demons for power and immortality -some might even turn into demons. Although most mages were hunted down and burned during the Mage Hunt after the first Holy War, there were still a few sects in present day that would abduct and use human lives as sacrifice for their rituals.

  
“Yup, the concentration of sins and dark energy is pretty convincing.”

  
“I say, we go for a mage hunt.” Yerim suggested as she clicked on the hammers of her revolvers.

  
“Let’s be patient everyone, nothing’s for sure right now.” Seungwan tried to calm them down before she continued, “I'll keep that in mind, Seulgi. Anyone knows the ins and outs of this district?”

  
“Me!” Saeron who had been silent the whole time raised her hand. 

  
“Actually, the both of us.” She added indicating that Yerim and her knew the district quite well. “Jeongyeon unnie lives around this area so the both of us come here come often.”

  
“Oh, Jeongyeon lives here? I should pay her a visit sometime later.” 

  
“I don’t think she would like to see you right now, Seungwan unnie.”

  
“Why not?” Seungwan was puzzled, she had always been nice to Jeongyeon and they have been polite to each other for the past years as far as she knew.

  
“Well, you were both candidates for the Knight title...” 

  
“Oh, that.” Seungwan may be clueless most of the time but she was not dumb. The both of them were the top two candidates to replace Nayeon after her death. Seungwan had originally rejected the offer when the church council elected her because she thought it would be nice for Jeongyeon who was Nayeon's best friend to take the Knight title in her honour but the church thought differently. 

  
Seungwan was born into the Son family who had been backing and supporting the church in terms of finance and prowess. The Son bloodline has been a strong household in the church ever since the first Holy War, continuously producing Knight level blade masters serving the church for centuries. Seungwan whose soul that was strong and pure paired with her incredible talent in swordsmanship was the better choice for the church.

  
Knowing that she had taken the spot instead of Jeongyeon, maybe Jeongyeon would not really like to see her for the mean time.

  
“But I already told Jeongyeon _unnie_ we'll be visiting her later.” confessed Yerim. Before they had arrived and were on the way to district A, Yerim had message Jeongyeon that they would be paying her a visit.

  
“Oh well, I guess the both of us will just have visit her ourselves later.” Saeron replied. 

  
Ever since Nayeon’s passing, Yerim and Saeron had been visiting her more than usual. To Yerim, Nayeon had been like a big sister. She loved her very much and looked up to her a lot. Nayeon who had taught her everything she knew about life passed away in a fight with a Demon Lord only fuelled Yerim's hate for demons even more.

  
She could only imagine how much Jeongyeon was going through. Nayeon might be a big sister to Yerim but she was a life partner for Jeongyeon. Prior to Nayeon’s fight with the Lord of Pride, Jeongyeon had told Yerim and Saeron of her plans to ask Nayeon out on date.

  
_“Finally! After years and years of cowardice, you’ve finally grew some balls!”_ Yerim cheered for her when she had heard of Jeongyeon’s plans but who would have thought that before their plans could even come to fruition, such a tragic incident would occur. 

  
“Should we get going then?” After the awkward silence lasted for a few seconds, Seulgi decided to break it by suggesting they spilt up into pairs to look around the area for any possible clues.

  
“Come with me, Joo Joo!” Seulgi grabbed onto Joohyun’s hands but she pulled out and held Seungwan’s instead.

  
“I’m going with Wannie.” Seulgi’s mood immediately turned gloomy when she saw the both of them holding hands. 

  
“Hmph! Fine then, I’ll walk by myself!” 

*****

  
“So, what's going on between you and Seulgi, Hyun.” Seungwan asked after they have been walking for a while.

  
“W-what do you mean what’s going on between us.” 

  
“I might be clueless most of the time but I’m not dumb you know. I can see that the both of you aren’t just a teacher and student kinda thing.”

  
_‘Not dumb my ass! I’ve liked you since forever and you’re still clueless you dumbass!’_ Joohyun mentally cussed before she continued, “There’s nothing going on between us, Wannie.”

  
“Well, whatever it is Hyun. Remember, she’s a demon. Don’t get too close with them, nothing good ever comes out from this.”

  
Yerim and Saeron on the other hand were going to Jeongyeon’s. 

  
“Unnie! We're here!” Yerim knocked on the apartment’s door as the both of them called out to Jeongyeon.

  
“Hi, come on in.” Jeongyeon greeted them as she opened the door for them.

  
“How are you doing?” Yerim asked, she genuinely cared for Jeongyeon’s health as she had looked quite lifeless lately.

  
“I’ve been doing fine, you both don’t have to worry.” Jeongyeon tried to force a smile when she answered them. 

  
“We’re just worried about you _unnie_.” Saeron replied as she opened the pack of biscuits Jeongyeon had placed on her coffee table.

  
“Well, there is something you can do to help me" Jeongyeon said, making both Saeron and Yerim looked at her expectantly.

  
Only, when the both of them looked her in the eyes, Jeongyeon’s eyes glowed red just like a demon’s eyes would.

  
“Wait a sec-" Before Yerim could even speak out, both Yerim and Saeron received a fist on their faces blowing them away hitting the walls of the apartment. 

"After all, tonight is the full moon." She said as she moved over to the two unconscious demon slayers.

**_“Keep Yerim alive, I want her as one of us.”_** The voice inside Jeongyeon’s head ordered. She nodded to herself before picking up the knocked out Yerim, carrying her over the shoulder. 

  
“What the fuck is going on!” She turned around to see Saeron with her sword drawn out in a fighting stance, her blade growing red on one half and orange on the other.

  
“Move, Saeron. I don’t want to hurt you.” Jeongyeon said as she moved closer and closer to Saeron who was blocking the door. Jeongyeon was pretty sure she had put enough strength when she hit the both to make them fall unconscious. 

  
“Put Yerim down, unnie!” The blade in her hands glowed even brighter, so bright it lighted up the whole apartment.

  
With a sigh, Jeongyeon produced a Glock in her right hands and pulled the trigger on Saeron but a quick slash from Saeron deflected all the bullets. She rushed in to attack Jeongyeon but careful not to hurt the unconscious Yerim.

  
Jeongyeon nimbly dodged her attacks even with a human body over her shoulder. The charged-up sword beam from her blade was finally released when Jeongyeon shot another round of bullets in a fan-like pattern. The bullets stopped mid-flight before changing their trajectory towards Saeron. The large sword beam released had incinerated all the bullets as it made its way to Jeongyeon who summoned a magic circle to block the sword beam.

  
When the smoke from the explosion subsided, Saeron had disappeared in front of her which meant she could only be behind her so Jeongyeon immediately turned around with her Glock pointing Saeron at point-blank range.

  
Fortunately, Saeron had inhumane reflexes as she blinked behind Jeongyeon at the same time trying to stab her with her glowing purplish blade but Jeongyeon was quick to dodge.

  
Suddenly, Saeron felt both her ankles were tied by something. She looked down to see pitch black chains with spear end tips wrapped around her ankles. Before she even lifted her head, Jeongyeon was already right in front of her. She looked totally different from before, both her eyes now glowing crimson red and she was emitting black aura around her. 

**_"Sleep now, young one."_** Jeongyeon placed her right hand on Saeron's forehead and the next thing she knew, she had fell unconscious.

*****

“Hmph!” Seulgi was sulking and pouting by herself as she walked along the walk path of a neighbourhood in district A.

  
“What’s so great about her! Wannie her Wannie there, is she that great!” Seulgi grumbled to herself but deep down, she knew Seungwan indeed was great. She was pure, strong, and kind to anyone even when Seulgi was a demon, she would be polite and not act harshly to her but, she was human and Seulgi hated humans. Even more so when they act nice to her.

  
As she continued grumbling to herself, a humungous mallet was suddenly flying to her face. Being the Demon Lord with superb inhumane strength that she is, Seulgi flicked the mallet off making it struck the ground creating a large dent.

  
“Oops, my bad! I’ll try to aim better next time!” The honeyed voice of the mallet's owner spoke as she arrived.

  
“So much for a greeting huh, Park Sooyoung.” Seulgi complained as she looked Sooyoung in the eyes.

  
“Oh my, where are my manners! Good evening, Seulgi! How long has it been? A century? Or two?” Sooyoung grinned as she picked up her mallet.


	10. The Rescue

“By the way, I’ve been wanting to ask you something.” Joohyun said as she tried to change the topic.

  
“What is it, Hyun?”

  
“Do you know how to summon black chains like Jeongyeon?” Joohyun asked as she recalled seeing Jeongyeon summoning pitch black chains that pierced Hanbin.

  
“Black chains? As in pitch black chains with spear end tips that come out from magic circles?” Joohyun was surprised to see Seungwan's eyes wide filled with shock.

  
“Well that was some very specific details but yes, exactly what you said Seungwan.” Joohyun did not believe Seungwan’s eye could open even wider but it did and to be honest, she did not know if she should be surprised or not.

  
“Joohyun, that’s magic and we don’t do magic!” 

  
“Right, we don’t and shouldn’t so why is Jeongyeon... oh shit.” Suddenly things started to make sense for both Joohyun and Seungwan. 

  
District A had massive gathering of sins and dark energy and Jeongyeon used magic the last time Joohyun was with her. What more, her apartment was located in district A and Yerim and Saeron are heading to her apartment.

  
“Shit! You call Saeron and I call Yerim!” Joohyun told Seungwan as she pulled out her phone to call Yerim but five tries later, the both of them still did not pick up the call.

  
_‘Seulgi! Yerim and Saeron are in trouble!’_ Joohyun mentally told Seulgi as she panicked. 

  
_‘Hang on a sec, I’m in the mid of something.’_

  
_‘What something are you on! This is an emergency!’_

  
“Joohyun, calm down!” Seungwan shouted and put both her hands on Joohyun's shoulders to put her in place. 

  
“Relax, okay? I got this.” Reassured Seungwan as Joohyun was mentally trying to contact Seulgi but Seulgi was not answering her.

  
“Listen, I didn’t really want to say this but I actually marked all of you.” Seungwan confessed as she looked down to her feet.

  
“What? Marked? Us?” Joohyun asked, baffled by Seungwan's sudden confession.

  
“Well, not everyone I guess. I can’t mark Seulgi.”

  
“Son Seungwan, we don’t have time to waste.”

  
“Okay, okay! I marked everyone with a prayer this morning so that if anything happens,” she put her fingers up air quoting the word ‘happens' before she continued, “I can at least track you guys down.” 

  
“Well, what you did might just save two lives right now.” 

  
“I know right! I’m a genius, Hyun!” Seungwan cheered for herself while Joohyun gave her a deadpanned look.

  
“What are we waiting for! Let’s go! Lead the way!” Joohyun pulled Seungwan as they made their exit from the park. Seungwan closed her eyes as she tried to form a link with her markings and when the link was formed, she opened her eyes and held Joohyun’s hands. 

  
“Follow me, Hyun!” 

*****

“I believed it has been around two hundred years, Sooyoung. How have you been?” Seulgi asked with a deadpanned look.

  
To say she had been surprised to see Sooyoung here would be an overstatement even when they have not met each other for more than a century. After all, when there was a lot sins and dark energy concentrated in one place, the possibility of demons and mages gathering in one place is high. What does this mean for the likes of Sooyoung? A feast, a huge feast.

  
“It’s been fine, I guess. I’ve even got myself new toys!” Sooyoung exclaimed she held up her mallet and wave it around.

  
“What do you think? Isn’t this beautiful?” Wearing a shit eating grin on her face, Sooyoung asked Seulgi of her mallet. 

  
“Sigh, it looks okay but don’t you think that’s a bit too much?” Seulgi sighed as she facepalmed herself before giving her opinion on Sooyoung’s huge mallet. To be honest, the rubies embedded around the circumference of the mallet’s head was a bit too ‘Sooyoung’ for her. So red and so shiny, exactly how Sooyoung likes it.

  
“I got this baby a few days after the war, they were giving out relics and no one wanted this. You don’t know how much easier my life has been since I picked this baby up!” Sooyoung ignored Seulgi as she continued on her babble about how wonderful her mallet was.

  
_‘Sigh, this is why I avoid you as much as I can.’_ She mentally complained to herself.

  
_‘Don’t lie to yourself, Seulgi. I know you like me!’_ Shit, she forgot Sooyoung could also read minds.

  
“So, care to tell me why you’re here, Sooyoung?” She asked trying to stir the topic away from Sooyoung’s mallet and her ability to read minds.

  
“Don’t bullshit with me Seulgi, you know exactly why I’m here.” It was a mystery how Sooyoung was always able to keep a smile on her face no matter how serious the situation was.

  
“Well, considering you’re here right now. Might as well help out an old friend with your magnificent nose then.” Seulgi replied sarcastically.

  
“You sure you want this? You’ve always despised these rituals right?” Okay, maybe Sooyoung does not always smile after all. Her sudden serious look kind of surprised Seulgi.

  
“Joohyun needs my help, Sooyoung.” 

  
“Alright, I’ll help you out. I’m going there myself anyways.” Sooyoung responded as she decided that having someone to chat on the way to the center of all that dark energy might not be a bad deal.

  
_‘So you’ve already met her huh.’_

*****

  
As it turned out, the location emitting all that dark energy was a huge church. 

  
“This does not give me good vibes, Hyun.” The both of them stood right outside the church gate, gulping their saliva as they felt the density of the dark energy. 

  
“Did you bring a spiritual container?” Joohyun asked as she turned to look at Seungwan beside her. Seungwan nodded her head as she brought out a few miniature spiritual containers from the pocket of her jacket. 

  
“Let’s set them up before we enter the church.” 

  
After the both of them had finally finished setting up the containers to cover the large area of the church, they prayed for invisibility so they can invade the church stealthily. With the sheath of their swords glowing in shades of blue, they charged into the church. 

  
_‘I’m coming Joo Joo, don’t do anything stupid alright?’_ Seulgi's voice suddenly appearing inside her head calmed her down as they reach the large hallway of the church.

  
_‘Where are you? Come here quickly! We're at the church!’_

  
_‘I know! I’m coming!’_ Seulgi wanted to just teleport to where Joohyun and Seungwan was but Sooyoung was blocking her from doing so, saying something about needing company for her journey.

  
“God damn you and your anti-magic, Sooyoung! They need my help as soon as possible you know!” She cussed but Sooyoung’s grip on her wrist was dead strong.

  
“Well genius, why don’t you just teleport the both us there?” and the both of them just stood there suddenly realising that they could have done that since the very beginning.

  
“Don’t mind what I just said! Let’s keep going, Seulgi!” She continued to drag Seulgi as they made their way to the church.

  
“Yah! Let me go! Park Sooyoung, I’m gonna beat your ass after this!” But Sooyoung continued to ignore her.

  
“Alright then! Let’s go full speed!” Sooyoung stopped as she anchored her feet to the ground before she leaped to give herself a boost, dragging Seulgi along the way.

*****

To say that the sight before them was terrifying would be an understatement, Joohyun almost dropped her katana when she saw the amount of demons and people in the huge assembly hall of the church. 

  
“Oh my gosh, Seungwan. There’s so many of them.” She whispered quietly as they try to hide their presence.

  
Seungwan had joined the Knights and other S ranked demon slayers on ritual raids before, but seeing a sacrifice of fifty people was horrifying. She glared at Jeongyeon who was standing in the middle of the assembly hall carrying Yerim in her arms with an unconscious Saeron laid on the ground.

  
She placed Yerim down on the ground in the middle of a large magic circle drawn with blood before a dark figure oozing off black smoke materialised in front of her. 

  
_**“Well done, Jeongyeon. We shall begun shortly when the night falls.”**_ The black figure spoke to her as she announced the time for the ritual.

  
“Thank you, _unnie_.” 

  
**_“But, there is quite a few nuisance in here. Handle them.”_** The dark figure ordered before she disappeared again.

  
“You heard her boys! Get them.” Jeongyeon ordered the demons that were lazing around to attack Seungwan and Joohyun.

  
“Shit!” Joohyun cussed as the both of them split up and dodged.

  
Joohyun pulled out her katana as she parried the claws of the demons attacking her while Seungwan continued to use her sheath to parry attacks.

  
“Go back to hell!” Joohyun shouted as orange sword beams were shot out to the wave of demons coming at her. Seeing as the swarm of demons were never ending, Seungwan had no choice but to draw her jingum – the supposed Korean equivalent of a katana, except shorter, wider, thinner and lighter.

  
As she drew out her jingum, white flames burst out blowing away the demons and even burning some of them.

There it was, covering itself on the blade of her jingum was the white flames of _Pa_ _radiso_.

  
The Son family was a devoted one, centuries of devoting their lives for the virtues and church had granted them a blessing from the seven virtues. That is, the white flames of _Paradiso_. 

  
Like the name _Inferno_ , there was a preferred name for heaven. The Knights and demon slayers preferred to call heaven, _Paradiso_. 

  
The white flames were said to be the hottest and most powerful fire to fight against demons and only an individual of the Son bloodline was able to summon them but, not every demon slayer of the Son household is able to pull off the summoning. It is said that only one person in every generation is able to summon it.

  
Son Seungwan was the chosen one in her generation to summon and wield the holy white flames of _Paradiso_ into the battlefield. Her first experience summoning the white flames was when her great grandfather who was the former wielder of the white flames passed away. 

  
It came to her as a surprise as she had never wanted anything to do with demon slaying, all Seungwan wanted to do was make music and sing but the virtues had a different plan for her. Now, wielding the holy white flames of _Paradiso_ in her hands paired with an excellent swordsmanship, Seungwan stood at the top as the number one blade master.

  
A fusillade of bullets flew over her way as she took down the demons with her white flames but it was all for naught as the flames incinerated the bullets before they could even reach her.

  
Jeongyeon rushed toward Seungwan as she continuously shot rounds and rounds of bullets her way but Seungwan ignored her advances as she trusted her life on the white flames to handle the bullets for her.

  
“I don’t want to fight you, Jeongyeon! Stop this!” She shouted as she continued to set demons and demons on fire with her slashes. 

  
Joohyun was about to reach Jeongyeon when they suddenly heard Yerim shouting, “What is going on! And why you fighting amongst yourselves!” 

  
“Keep quiet, Yerim. This is nothing for you to worry about.” Jeongyeon looked over briefly before she turned her eyes back to Seungwan who was still fighting the waves of demons coming her way.

  
Jeongyeon was about reach Seungwan when she sensed not one but two sword beams coming her way from behind her. She dodged and turned around to see Joohyun rushing toward her with frightening pace as her blade glowed green-ish hues. Joohyun then multiplied into six and her clones spread out charging at Jeongyeon in different directions.

  
Green hues were then mixed with orange hues as all six Joohyuns shot out sword beams at Jeongyeon. Jeongyeon did not even bother covering herself or dodge when all the sword beams hit her. After the smoke subsided, Joohyun looked to see Jeongyeon who was not even fazed one bit as her eyes glowed red with black aura surrounding her.

  
Joohyun was about to charge for Jeongyeon again when Yerim suddenly jumped out interrupting her from going further.

  
“I’ll talk to her! Just, don’t attack for now...” Yerim pleaded Joohyun as she spread out both her arms. Sighing, Joohyun nodded her head before turning away to kill the other demons but not too far away so that she can still keep Yerim in her range.

  
Turning around, Yerim looked over to Jeongyeon who was already looking at her beforehand with a cold expression. 

  
“What is this about! What are you doing _unnie_!” Yerim already had enough tragedy on her, she did not need another one. Losing family after family to the demons was starting to make her lose hope but having Jeongyeon and Saerom who she treated as family was enough for her to hang onto the hope that some day she could make it. Make it out of that despair she had when the demon ate up her parents and sisters.

  
When Yerim was first put into the church’s orphan home ran by Taeyeon, Yerim had been freaking out nonstop. She would scream in fear and block out anyone who tried to talked to her but Saeron had been there for her even when she would hit and scream at her. Eventually, her fears slowly subsided as Saeron got closer to her each day, not a day having a single thought of giving up on Yerim.

  
Now, at the age of sixteen, Yerim would faced another tragic incident as Nayeon had passed away. Again, she lost her family to the demons. Her despair and fears slowly started to creep back up on her and the hate was growing stronger and stronger each day.

  
Seeing Jeongyeon standing in front of her, slowly turning into the one thing she hated the most was only adding fuel to her hatred.

“That’s it, Yerim let the rage and hate take over you.” Jeongyeon said after she felt the hatred in Yerim growing stronger and stronger by the second.

  
“ _Unnie_ , you have to stop this! Nayeon unnie wouldn’t want you to do this!” Yerim tried to convince Jeongyeon to stop by bringing up Nayeon but it was of no use as Jeongyeon's pride and hatred had almost completely took over her body.

  
**_“Maybe we can take Saeron's life, let her be a catalyst to Yerim’s awakening.”_** The voice inside Jeongyeon's head told her. 

  
She held up one hand, pointing her Glock at Saeron who had remained unconscious, she was about to pull the trigger when her fingers stopped as if her conscious was telling her not to do it. Seeing as though Jeongyeon was having an internal struggle with herself, Yerim quickly moved to Saeron as she tried to move her away. 

  
_‘You can do this unnie! Don’t let the demons take over your body!’_ She mentally cheered for Jeongyeon as she tried to carry Saeron to safety. She tried to run out of the assembly hall to place Saeron outside before she could return to the battlefield inside but the swamp of demons, whether the flying ones, crawling ones and even the ones that had the same appearance as humans were proving to be a hassle for her as she tried to avoid them.

  
“Run, Yerim! We'll cover for you!” Seungwan shouted as she made her way to protect Yerim. Joohyun who has been following closely started to change her stance, charging up the energy in her blade before she released five sword beams in a fan-like pattern cleaning up the demons.

  
“What about them!” She asked indicating the fifty individuals laid on the ground unconscious. 

  
“Get Saeron to safety first!” was Seungwan’s response as the white flames covering her blade burst even bigger. 

  
_‘Alright Son Seungwan! You can pull this off! It's only for a while!'_ Seungwan struck her blade to the ground before she summoned two walls of white flame immediately bursting out from the ground providing a walk path for Yerim. 

  
“Run faster! I can’t keep up the wall for long!” Seungwan warned as she stood there vulnerable to the demons coming at her. Joohyun tried to move over to protect Seungwan but she was too slow as a rather large demon with their mouth on their stomach jumped on her opening their jaws. 

  
“No!” Joohyun shouted as the scene unfolded before her but a sudden large explosion from above caused the parts of the ceiling to fall off and luckily, some landed on the demon before it could reach Seungwan, stopping them from reaching their goal.

  
Joohyun turned to see two figures landing in the middle of the assembly hall.

  
“Good evening everyone! Ready for dinner?” Sooyoung shouted out her greeting and suddenly all the weaker demons cowered in fear before her. 

  
“Sooyoung? What the heck? Why are you here!” Joohyun questioned her, flabbergasted at her appearance before she spotted Seulgi standing beside her. 

  
_‘Thought you lost your way here, Seulgi.’_ She mentally told Seulgi sarcastically, she would never admit it but seeing Seulgi's arrival that evening brought calmness to her in that battlefield. Seulgi did not respond to her but the way she looked at Joohyun told her that 'everything will be okay now, I'll handle this.'


	11. Purify

“That’s a story for later, Joo Joo!” Sooyoung shouted as she threw her huge mallet at a shelled demon, cracking the shells in the process.

  
“I have a dinner to catch!” She continued as she pounced on the demon breaking his shells messily.

  
“I don’t mind, Sooyoung. You can go crazy on them.” Seulgi said giving her permission.

  
“Alright then, if you say so!” Sooyoung responded as she threw the demon from her grip to the other demons to knock them off. Seulgi quickly moved over to Joohyun and covered her eyes. 

  
“What the! Why are you covering my eyes!” She yelled as she tried to remove Seulgi's hands.

  
“You might not want to see this.” When Joohyun did remove her hands, Sooyoung had already gone missing and was replaced with what looked to be huge humanoid beast with a long and huge pure white mane, long enough to reach below her shoulder blades. 

  
The white beast trashed around the weak demons and crunched on them every chance she could as they cowered and tried to escape from her vice claws. For the ones with hard shells and exoskeleton, her mallet would flew back to her hand and she would use it to crush them.

  
“Comeback here! I’m not done with you!” She shouted as she leaped to it just like how an apex predator would to its prey. 

  
“See? Told you, you wouldn’t like it.” Seulgi explained as she looked at Joohyun’s horrified expression. Seungwan on the other hand finally could not hold it as she removed her jingum from the ground. 

  
“T-that’s a guardian, right? Am I really seeing a guardian right in front me?” She pointed out completely shocked by the appearance of a mystical guardian.

  
“Yup, that really is a mystical guardian over there. A really hungry one.” Seulgi confirmed as the three of them looked over to the white beast cleaning out the swarm of demons in a quicker pace than both Joohyun and Seungwan combined. 

  
“Wait a second, that’s Sooyoung?” Joohyun questioned as realisation suddenly dawned upon her. Seulgi who stood beside her nodded her head and both Seungwan and Joohyun were shocked for different reasons.

  
Seungwan was shocked because she had known Sooyoung for years but she never would have thought or even detect the slightest bit that Sooyoung was a mystical guardian.

  
Joohyun on the other hand was shocked because the Sooyoung she knew -even though has crazy tendencies at times- was all ladylike but damn, that was a beast right in front of her eyes. Mystical guardian beast? Whatever that was, she had never heard of it.

  
Sooyoung was biting off the wing of a demon when she was suddenly shot by bullets from Jeongyeon’s Glocks. Her Sapphire coloured eyes gleamed as she successfully ripped of the wings of her prey. She turned to look at Jeongyeon then looked back to Seulgi as if asking _‘Is she on the menu?’_

  
Before Seulgi could even answer her, the both of them suddenly felt a change in the tension around the air. 

  
“Oh shit.” Seulgi cussed.

*****

Yerim was about to make it to the exit of the assembly hall when the walls of white flame extinguished. Just when she was about to make it, a demon spotted her and grabbed her before she could dodge him.

  
The demon then threw them harshly to the ground as Yerim hugged Saeron tightly , careful not to let her get hurt by the throw. As she crashed into the ground, Yerim could feel her bone cracked. 

  
“Ugh! God damn you!” She cussed but there was nothing she could do, she had to carry Saeron and her guns were left at Jeongyeon’s apartment. Joohyun and the others were too far away and waiting for them to come would be too late for her. 

  
So she stood back up, with Saeron on her back this time. She prayed silently to the virtues of Diligence, Charity and Humility to bless her with the strength and speed to go pass the demon in front of her. A red aura mixed with purple started growing around her as she put one feet behind the other, eyeing the demons gathering in front of her and getting ready to make a run for it and sprint.

  
The ground beneath her feet broke as she lifted them, dashing and dodging the demons coming for her. She blinked from one place to another and dodged as nimbly as she could. Yerim was never strong with the virtues -her faith was not strong enough- hence why she was a sharpshooter instead as they do not require as much prayers in battles like the blade masters and lancers do -seriously, they use the already blessed bullets more than they say their prayers- but Yerim sure hope she was strong with the virtues right now.

  
It was when she finally made it to the entrance of the assembly hall when she felt a change in weight behind her. Turning her head back as much as she could, Yerim saw Saeron's body stabbed by the long claws of a humanoid demon. Blood was splurting everywhere as Yerim quickly stopped her movement to check on Saeron and red was all she saw.

  
_‘Why is this always happening to me?’_

  
_‘Why always the people around me?’_

  
_‘Am I really so useless?’_

  
Hate and despair consumed Yerim as her tainted soul became more and more contaminated. The dark aura and black smokes started gathering around her as demons came at her. 

  
A sudden shriek from her blew the incoming demons away when the anger, rage, hate and despair finally completely consumed her whole. She dropped Saeron onto the ground and entered the fray violently attacking everyone and everything. 

  
_**“Look at her, she's natural ! She doesn’t even need the sacrifice and ritual at all!”**_ Suddenly, Jeongyeon did not sound like herself anymore as she spoke the demonic language with a man’s voice. Dark smoke was oozing off her as her eyes changed to those of a glowing Amber.

  
“Joohyun, grab Yerim and make sure she stays put. Seungwan, go and check up on Saeron. I assume you have a healing prayer. No?” Joohyun immediately followed Seulgi's orders but Seungwan stayed put and questioned Seulgi.

  
“What about you? Deal with her?” 

  
“Him, she’s not herself right now and I know you can feel it too.” The Jeongyeon standing in front them at that moment was not herself, she was definitely possessed by a higher being. 

  
**_“You god damn little shit, using my sins to tempt people now huh?”_** Seulgi spoke as she eyed the Demon Lord standing in front her. 

**_"Ah, if it isn't the Purifier herself."_** He mocked as he moved toward her with a smirk before he continued, **_“I gotta say she’s got quite the talent, just like you were back then, Seulgi.”_** Seulgi did not back off, her eyes glowed Vermillion as if challenging him to come at her.

  
**_“If you’re so strong then stop hiding behind Jiyong and come at me then, Seunghyun”_** She mocked back when the pitch black flames on both sides of her forehead started lighting up acting as her horn. 

  
**_“Ha ha, you’ll see real soon Seulgi. I’m quite impatient with my surprise for you.”_** He laughed and replied Seulgi when they stood face to face. 

  
The amount of energy exuded from the both were so strong it forced everyone in the assembly except Sooyoung to be weighed down by their energy. Suddenly, Sooyoung came behind Jeongyeon and with her divine claws, she scratched Jeongyeon’s possessed body causing Jeongyeon to start screaming as black smoke blew out from her wounds.

  
“I would very much like to finally have the chance to you eat but not today buddy, get the fuck outta here!” Sooyoung cussed as she held onto Jeongyeon whose limps had failed on her as she was about to drop to ground due to exhaustion. She turned herself up to look at Sooyoung, her left eye still glowed Amber as she grinned.

  
“It’s been awhile, Sooyoung. I’ll make sure to drag you to hell next time.” As the Demon Lord finished his business there, he left her body and returned back to where he came from. Knowing the Demon Lord has finally left, Seulgi immediately rushed to Joohyun who was parrying each and every of Yerim’s attacks, careful not to hurt her as she had sheathed her katana.

  
Joohyun thought to herself what had gone wrong as she parried and dodge Yerim’s attacks. Yerim was a bright girl, she may not be the most polite but she had a good heart as far as Joohyun knew of her in their short few weeks of knowing each other.

  
To see the Yerim who was once a chatterbox and troublesome teen who liked to joke around turned into a demon was just saddening, too saddening for her. Yerim’s eyes finally glowed red as two small wings broke out from her back. She shrieked as her wings spread and Joohyun could see how even her teeth had grew into to long and sharp ones.

  
Seulgi came in between them the moment the demon changed Yerim spat out toxic poison as she turned around and hugged Joohyun to block her from getting melted by the toxic. 

  
“It’s okay, leave the rest to me.” Seulgi reassured her as she grabbed onto her hands.

  
“Can you help her?” Joohyu looked up to Seulgi with teary eyes, she felt that she had yet again failed to save another person just like back then with Heejin. 

  
“It’s not impossible to turn her back to a human as long as it has not completely consumed her whole. There’s still hope for Yerim.” She wiped Joohyun's tears as she answered. 

  
_‘Damn it, Seulgi! She’s crying again.’_ Seulgi thought to herself as they broke away from the hug to face Yerim. 

  
“Do me a favour, Joohyun. Stay far away from us now.” Seulgi warned as her eyes once again glowed the vermillion colours she had donned previously. Flames in shades of purple started combusting on her right palm as she clasped her hand into a fist making the flames enveloped it.

  
“Hey kid, what I’m about to do might hurt a lot so I apologise beforehand.” Seulgi spoke as she looked around her, there were about twenty demons left and she believed Sooyoung could handle them alone. Joohyun was looking over to her as she kneeled beside Seungwan who was doing her best to heal Saeron who was on the brink of death. Why have they not called for back up was something Seulgi had wondered to herself the moment she and Sooyoung crash landed into the church. 

  
Seulgi grabbed onto Yerim with a vice grip the moment she decided to jump on her to bite her with her strong teeth. Yerim’s mouth came at her again as Seulgi let go of her grip to cover Yerim’s mouth with her left hand. 

  
“This might really hurt so bear with it, alright?” Seulgi said although she knew Yerim would not hear anything she said as she had completely gone feral. Her right palm with the purplish flames slammed onto Yerim’s heart and immediately consuming her whole. Yerim screamed in pain as she tried to scram away from Seulgi but her strong grip would not let go of Yerim, letting her be burned and purified by the flames of _Purgatorio_.

  
Unbeknownst to many of this age and time, the Lord of Wrath had a second title to her. That is, the Purifier from Hell. Not only could Seulgi wield the darkest black flames from the hottest pits of _Inferno,_ she was also able to summon the purple flames of _Purgatorio_. 

  
Unlike the white flames of _Paradiso_ and the black flames of _Inferno_ that burn and fight against each other, the flames of _Purgatorio_ was used to cleanse and purify souls of their sins. _Purgatorio_ was after all, a place for souls in the afterlife to burn in and only after they were purified were they given the chance to either reincarnate or enter _Paradiso_. 

  
Watching the burning Yerim screaming and shrieking in pain had pained Joohyun as she watched on, far away near the entrance of the assembly hall. It was only after two hours did the flames extinguished, Seungwan had called for back up from the church to help bring the people who was to be used as sacrifices along with Saeron to safety by then.

  
“She’s not completely purified but this should be enough to stop her from turning into a demon.” Seulgi said as she carried an unconscious Yerim bridal style while walking toward the group of three -Sooyoung, Joohyun, Seungwan. 

  
Suddenly, a person with great power entered the assembly hall walking toward them as the tip of their umbrella kept clanking to the floor while they walk. 

  
When they all felt the person’s presence, Joohyun and Seungwan bowed their head slightly as they greeted her. 

  
“Good evening, Miss Taeyeon. What brings you here?” Seungwan greeted as she wondered to herself why Taeyeon, the supposed leader of the Knights of The Seven Virtues was making an appearance here. 

  
“Good evening , Seungwan.” Taeyeon greeted back as she gave her a small smile. She turned her head to see the other three looking at her. “Greetings Lord of Wrath and the great Guardian of West.” She greeted before continuing, “I supposed I should thank the both of you for saving my precious people.” 

  
“Cut the chase and get to the point, Taeyeon.” Seulgi barked back as her expression turned sour, she had never liked her ever since five hundred years ago and she will never learn to like her even now.

  
“Sigh, I don’t want anything Seulgi.” She sighed as she walked over to Seulgi asking her to hand over Yerim. 

  
“When are you going to stop this project of yours, nothing good will ever come out of this. Not five hundred years ago and not in the future. Just quit it, Taeyeon.” Seulgi scolded with malice as she handed over Yerim. 

  
“Project? What project?” Joohyun asked aloud wondering what the two of them were talking about.

  
Taeyeon walked away with Yerim in her arms as she replied, “You'll see Seulgi, you'll see.”

  
All of them went different ways after the tiring evening, Joohyun was lying on her bed after taking a hot shower. Yerim, Jeongyeon and Saeron were all taken to hospital by Taeyeon and Seungwan had to report about the incident to Taeyeon.

  
As she laid there, she remembered the times Seulgi had jumped out in front of her to save her and she came to realised that she was starting to become dependant of her. She would called out to Seulgi the first moment she meets a problem unconsciously and Joohyun thought it was not right of her. She should not be dependant on someone like Seulgi, someone who is a demon. 

  
So she laid there with her thoughts heavy about a certain Demon Lord the whole night until she fell asleep.

*****

“Care to tell me what got into you?” Sooyoung asked as she put down her glass after taking a shot of soju. 

  
“I don’t know, Sooyoung.” Seulgi replied, her face frowning as she too, took a shot of soju. The both of them were having soju with some light snacks on Sooyoung’s balcony as they talked about certain topics.

  
“You don’t like humans at all and now you’re suddenly so kind to one?” 

  
“I don’t know, Sooyoung. I really don’t! All I know is that I want to be around her.” Seulgi confessed her confusion her to Sooyoung as she took another of the soju. The strong ‘kick’ of the certain alcohol not affecting her at all. 

  
Sooyoung knew, she knew exactly why Seulgi was doing all this but she had decided to keep quite and changed the topic. 

  
“What about Yerim then? She’s not Joohyun.” 

  
“I feel bad for her. In a way, I kind of see myself in her when I was purifying her soul.” The both of them continued drinking the whole night as they talked about different things that have happened to them during the past years, trying to catch up on each other.

  
“Sooyoung, I need a favour.” Seulgi announced after she had popped a peanut into her mouth.

  
“What is it?” was Sooyoung’s question and it was safe to say she did not like Seulgi’s answer.


	12. Gone

“Why are you in my apartment?” Joohyun asked but not surprised as she took a bite of the toast in her hand, looking at Seulgi who sat on the couch in the living room from the kitchen.

  
“Well, I don’t know.” Seulgi had looked so differently then when she replied her. It was different from the way she would usually look at her, the usual Seulgi smiles teasingly at her whenever their eyes met but the Seulgi who had been standing in her living room gave her such a troubled look. 

  
“What’s the problem with you? Suddenly trespassing into my apartment then say you don’t know why you’re here.” Joohyun tried to play it off with nonchalance to change up the mood.

  
“I-I don’t know, I really don’t. I’ve been thinking about you for a whole night and then suddenly I’m here.” Seulgi knew something had changed, the both of them were only supposed to be teacher and student, mentor and mentee but somewhere along the line they had gone a different way. 

  
Seulgi found herself liking the times she had spent with Joohyun, teasing her was always fun and being close to her was even better. It had been a long time since she last had an actual interaction with anyone so maybe having an actual person to interact with had been the reason she was like this, or so she thought. 

  
Joohyun could feel it either, she was supposed to hate demons -she still does, except for when it comes to Seulgi- but being with Seulgi felt different, it felt like she was too human to be a demon. Seulgi may have shown demonic traits but she had been nothing but a protector and an annoying person to her.

  
At first, Joohyun had felt annoyed by Seulgi’s constant teasing but she had learned to bear with it after awhile and sometimes when the chance arrives, she would tease back. Like the one time last week where they were having ice cream after their hospital visit to Yerim. Seulgi had ice cream all over her face when she took a bite of the ice cream and Joohyun had saw her ridiculous look before she pointed it out and laughed at her. 

  
Seulgi even blushed when Joohyun used her tissue to wipe her face, she assumed Seulgi was embarrassed but Seulgi supposed Joohyun does not need to know of her reasons. 

  
“W-what the hell are you talking about?” Joohyun blushed as the thought of Seulgi having only thoughts about her. 

  
It has been two weeks since the church incident, Seulgi and Joohyun had been visiting Yerim and Saeron who were still stuck in the hospital due to injuries on a daily basis, Jeongyeon had it worst as she had not wake up from her comatose. After having been saved by Seulgi, Yerim had became much more willing to interact and actually befriend Seulgi but things were progressing step by step in the moment as she still could not process the idea of a human befriending a demon. 

  
Saeron on the other hand was beyond grateful to Seulgi who had saved Yerim, she had heard of the incident from Seungwan after she woke up from he unconscious state. 

  
“So you like it when I think about you?” There it was, her teasing smile and tone of voice came out in an instant. Without having to take a step, Seulgi was suddenly in front of Joohyun wearing a big shit eating grin on her face.

  
“Do you think about me too, Joo Joo?” Joohyun may not have shown any reaction but she had came to notice that during the last two weeks, Seulgi had taken a liking to hold her fingers when they were together. Especially when Seungwan is around, Seulgi would never let go of Joohyun and when Seungwan tried to even move one step toward them, Seulgi would pull Joohyun one step back and glare at her.

  
_“What are you doing?”_ Joohyun would ask when she does that but never refute her and all Seulgi would do was show her that megawatt smile.

  
“N-no, I don’t think about you at all.” Joohyun denied as she separated herself from Seulgi to go to her bedroom and dress up to get ready for the day. 

  
*****

  
_‘What are you looking at?’_ Seulgi asked telepathically when she saw Sooyoung looking at her skeptically holding Joohyun’s finger as they sat beside Yerim’s bed. Seungwan was retailing her past high class profile cases animatedly to Saeron and Yerim as the both of them including Joohyun listen attentively to her.

  
_‘Nothing.’_ She shook her head disapprovingly before she continued, _‘Look at you, so pitiful. Clinging onto her yet she doesn’t give you any attention.’_ She mocked as she gave Seulgi an overly sad face.

  
_‘None of your business, Sooyoung.’_

_'Excuse me, it's Joy Park now. I'm a demon slayer now, remember?'_

Seulgi squinted her eyes as she eyed Sooyoung before she turned back to listen to Seungwan. She laid her head on Joohyun’s shoulder before she snuggled her head on the crook of Joohyun’s neck. Sooyoung noticed Joohyun’s body stiffened for a second before she relaxed and gave in eventually leaning her head on Seulgi's.

  
No one of the other three seemed to feel uncomfortable by their subtle actions, it seemed as though this had been a normal sight for them so Sooyoung did not bother about it. After all, she believed the both of them deserved this small moment of peace before Seulgi takes her leave. 

  
“Park Sooyoung!” Joohyun yelled her name out after having called her name for a few times without any response. Sooyoung looked on startled by the sudden shout of her name before she walked over to them and hushed her.

  
“We’re in the hospital, Joohyun. Keep quite will you?” She teased as she too took a seat around Yerim and Saeron’s beds. 

  
“I’ve just remembered about something, what are you exactly?” Joohyun asked, suddenly intrigued by Sooyoung’s true identity. 

  
“Sigh, alright. Everyone, sit tight cause I’m about to explain who I am and I’m going to say it only once.” All of them except for Seulgi leaned in with focused expressions as they anticipate Sooyoung’s words.

  
“I.” She paused dramatically then continued, “am a guardian. That’s it.” Her shit eating grin right then was really annoying and if it were not for Seulgi who had leaned her head on her shoulder, Joohyun would have slapped Sooyoung’s forearm.

  
“What she said was the truth though, she is a guardian.” Seulgi intervened before the others could give Sooyoung a scolding.

  
In truth, Sooyoung was really a guardian but not just any guardian, there had been countless of guardians in history but only five guardians were really important. The five guardians each guard a different region with the Azure Dragon guarding the East, White Tiger guarding the West, Black Tortoise guarding the North, Vermillion Bird guarding the South and the Yellow Qilin guarding the Central. 

  
The five mystical guardians were responsible for protecting and defending humans from demons as they feed on them. In return, humans would pay their respect annually with celebrations and festivals held in their names but that was all five hundred years ago, before the first Holy War. 

  
When the Vermillion Bird fell in the hands of Jiyong the Pride and passed on his flames that was said to be able to purify humans and demons, the first Holy War officially started. The war resulted in the death of three guardians namely, the Vermillion Bird, Azure Dragon and the Yellow Qilin. It took the combined prowess of the five guardians and the Seven Knights of Virtues to barely take down Jiyong. It was safe to say, if Jiyong were to ever start a war again, humanity would lose without a single strand of hope. 

  
After the first Holy War, both Sooyoung and the Black Tortoise have been lying low, keeping themselves out of sight from demons and humans alike but recently, Sooyoung had came up with a great idea. She was hungry and wanted to feast on the demons openly but that would make her too obvious so she signed herself up to become a demon slayer just so she can enjoy eating demons in disguise.

  
Staying at rank B was just good enough for her, she could do solo missions so people would not find out about her. Of course, Taeyeon had known about her actions but decided to keep quite about it as she saw no harm in Sooyoung’s actions. 

  
“Wait, I still don’t understand about something. What about your mallet?” Joohyun questioned, she had seen Sooyoung fought that day and the mallet was of no use to her at all. 

  
“Didn’t I told you about it? Some demons have shells and exoskeletons. I use the mallet to smash them." Sooyoung explained to Joohyun and it all finally made sense to her. Seulgi sat there listening with a deadpanned expression but somehow, Sooyoung using one of humanities most treasured relic for something as absurd as this was so fitting of her. 

  
“I’m quite hungry right now, how about we go out for lunch? Seungwan's paying!” Sooyoung suddenly announced with a shocked Seungwan who had her eyes opened wide. 

  
“Hold up, I never said anything about treating you guys to lunch.” 

  
“You did.”

  
“I did? When?” She started to question herself but Sooyoung had already stood up to drag them out of the hospital with a Yerim shouting for them to bring food when they visit next time.

*****

  
“Hey, how about we ditched the both of them and go somewhere else?” Seulgi suggested when they walked out of the hospital.

  
“Hmm, where do you want to go then?” Joohyun asked in return, Seulgi honestly did not expect her to actually consider her suggestion as she knew Joohyun had an obvious liking towards Seungwan.

  
“I don’t know, anywhere Joohyun. As long as it’s just you and me" She turned to Joohyun and smiled at her. 

  
“How about some ice cream?” Joohyun suggested as she looked up at the sky, she had been so busy lately that she did not even bother to look at the sky but now when things have come to slow down for a while, she had learned to appreciate again just how beautiful the sky is. That day, the weather was just alright as it was not too sunny yet not too cloudy. Everything felt just right.

  
“Okay then, ice cream it is.” The both of them walked away from Sooyoung and Seungwan as they headed for the ice cream parlour they had been visiting frequently for the past weeks.

  
“Joohyun! Where are-" Seungwan had wanted to ask when she saw both Seulgi and Joohyun heading for a different direction but Sooyoung stopped her before she could even finished her sentence. 

  
“Let them be, Seungwan. Let’s go, I’m hungry!” 

  
“You eat demons, Sooyoung not animals and vegetables.” Seungwan retorted but Sooyoung only scoffed at her before replying with a, “It doesn’t matter, Wendy.” using Seungwan’s cover up demon slayer name to tease her. 

*****

“So, which one are you trying this time?” Joohyun asked as they made their way to the counter. Seulgi looked at the large menu display above the counter before she made her choice. 

  
“I’m thinking of choosing ‘My Mom is An Alien’ but ‘Chocolate Forest’ is nice too.” Joohyun had come to realized that Seulgi really liked the matcha green tea and chocolate flavoured ice cream. She would always ponder about other choices but come back full cycle to the ‘Chocolate Forest' flavour.

  
“If you really like it then just stick to it, Seulgi.” Joohyun advised as Seulgi turned her head to look Joohyun in the eyes.

  
“You mean like you and yogurt flavoured ice cream?” She teased only for Joohyun to slap her forearm in return. 

  
“Joohyun.” Seulgi called out as they both walked side by side along the walk path of the street after purchasing their ice creams. 

  
“Hmm?” 

  
“Nothing, just feeling like calling your name.” She sighed as she decided against herself to not say what was on her mind. 

  
“You’ve been very weird today, Seulgi.” 

  
“Huh, how so?” Seulgi asked, befuddled by Joohyun’s sudden statement. 

  
“It’s just, you’ve been repeating this for a whole day already.” Joohyun answered as they come to a stop at a traffic light before the lights turned green and they crossed the street. 

  
“I did?” 

  
“Yup, I believe that was your fifth time just now.” She turned to see Seulgi who had frowned to herself. 

  
“So, what is it you wanted to tell me?” She asked again hoping, maybe Seulgi would tell what was troubling her this time.

  
“Nothing, really. I just felt like calling your name.” Seulgi held a straight face as she answered before she smiled and intertwined her fingers with Joohyun’s. 

  
Joohyun did not react and just let Seulgi continue holding her hand until they reached her apartment. It felt weird, they were a pair of demon and human and yet, Seulgi’s hand just felt so right as if her own smaller one was designed by the gods to fit perfectly in Seulgi’s. 

  
“Alright, we’re at your doorstep now Joohyun.” Seulgi announced but she did not let go of Joohyun’s hand. 

  
“Wanna come in?” Joohyun asked knowing that if Seulgi wanted to, she would barged into the apartment with or without anyone’s permission.

  
“It’s okay. I’ll be taking my leave now, Joo Joo.” She refused gently with an endearing little smile before she let go of Joohyun’s hand. Weird, Joohyun could have sworn she felt a certain warmth was lost when Seulgi had let go of her hand. 

  
“Goodbye, Joo Joo!” 

  
“See you later, Seulgi.” Conceding to the fact that Seulgi would never stop calling her Joo Joo, Joohyun smiled as she bid her goodbye. 

  
Only, Joohyun would have never thought that would be the last time she saw Seulgi.


	13. Thievery

_Three Months Later..._

“Damn it, Joy!” Joohyun shouted at the top of her lungs as they dodged and avoided the big white statue of a naked man coming at them. The statue proceeded to break the large windows and fall off from the museum’s first floor. 

  
“How is this my fault?” Sooyoung retorted as she smashed a relatively smaller statue that came her way. 

  
“How is it not your fault, you provoked them!”

  
“We’re gonna be killing them anyways, Irene!”

  
“Damn it! Should’ve brought the mallet tonight!” She cussed as they both tried to inch toward the eight headed demon that was throwing whatever they could grab. The museum officials had requested the church for demon slayers to investigate the museum after having security and staff missing frequently for a month. 

  
Who would have thought the supposed imported titanium alloy Yamata No Orochi statue from Japan was actually a demon in disguise. 

  
“Aish! I don’t care about the god damn museum anymore!” Sooyoung ranted before she threw her axe toward the eight headed demon. The axe then struck one of the eight heads before the other heads bit it off to throw it back at them. 

  
“Step aside, Hyun.” Sooyoung warned before she turned into her beast form. 

  
After two months of working with Sooyoung, it was still quite unnerving for Joohyun to watch her transform into her beast form. She could hear the loud cracking of the bones and see the sudden growth spurt of white hair(fur) growing throughout Sooyoung’s body but her long mane was thoroughly magnificent. It was just beautifully white and pure.

  
Standing at ten feet tall, Joohyun truly looked tiny when compared to Sooyoung's humongous size. She roared back to the eight headed demon as her sapphire eyes gleamed. Sooyoung in her beast form was truly a sight to behold but Joohyun had enough times to witness how she had ripped through countless of demons with her vice claws and that, was simply not something nice to witness.

  
**_“Buddy, you’re in for a ride!”_** She announced as she leaped through the hallway to where the eight headed demon was located, a large open area at the center of the first floor of the museum.

  
Two of the snake heads charged at her, trying to bite and pull her into two halves but Sooyoung only saw this as a chance for her to grab onto one of the heads. With her strong claws, they sunk in deep as she ripped the head apart. The other seven heads screamed in pain as Joohyun watched on from afar, feeling a slight bit pity for the demon. 

  
The supposedly ominous eight headed snake demon was completely devoured by Sooyoung fifteen minutes later. 

  
“That was quite a meal!” Sooyoung sighed, contented with her rather large meal served with eight snake heads. 

  
“Let’s get some ice cream for dessert, Hyun.” She suggested as they made their way out of the museum. 

  
“But, what about the museum? So many things are destroyed because of us.” The worry in her eyes were clear as day but Sooyoung clearly did not care about the museum. If it was Seulgi who had been fighting alongside her, she would've made sure nothing would ever come close to Joohyun and all the property damage would've been avoided.

  
“What about it? The demon was the cause, they should be grateful we even come and cleaned up the demon for them. Plus, we didn’t destroy anything important right?”

  
“Hmm, I don’t think we did. Did we?” She tried to remember as hard as she can but nothing came to mind.

  
“No, nothing of importance was destroyed. How about we get some ice cream, hmm?” Sooyoung smiled brightly with her eyes forming a crescent shape, trying to convince Joohyun that they really did not destroy anything important. Truth is, Sooyoung did not care about any of the things in the museum. She herself was probably older than anything in the museum anyways.

  
“Sigh, alright. Let’s get some ice cream.” 

*****

“Have you found anything about Seulgi?” Joohyun asked as she took a bite of the ‘Chocolate Forest' flavoured ice cream in her hands. 

  
“Nope, not a single thing.” was Sooyoung’s answer. 

  
It had been more than three months since Seulgi suddenly disappeared from her life without a single trace. Since then, quite a handful of things had happened. 

  
Firstly, Yerim and Saeron had finally gotten out of the hospital a month after Seulgi’s disappearance. Yerim was getting ready for her graduation and the blessing ceremony while Seungwan on the other hand was going to be inaugurated into Knighthood by the end of the month. 

  
Unfortunately, although Jeongyeon’s condition has been getting better and better each day, she was still in comatose. 

  
“Sigh, just where could she be?” Joohyun sighed as she recalled the last time she was with Seulgi. She believed there must be a reason behind this. If not, why would Seulgi act so strange the last time they were together? 

  
“Who knows? Maybe she just doesn’t want to see you anymore.” Sooyoung teased but Joohyun had took her words a bit too seriously. 

  
“You think maybe that’s why?” She tried to contact Seulgi telepathically at first when she noticed Seulgi had not talked to her for more than half a day. It was strange because the both of them never go more than two hours without talking telepathically when they are not together. It was like Joohyun had a link with Seulgi and all of a sudden, the link broke.

  
Joohyun had been worried about Seulgi’s sudden silence for more than half a day that she eventually went to Seulgi’s apartment to check up on her only to find an empty apartment. Without realising, Joohyun didn't just became too dependant on Seulgi, she apparently also had Seulgi on her mind every hour of the day ever since they met.

  
“It was a joke, okay? Don’t get upset, Seulgi’s probably just busy.” Sooyoung tried to make it clear to Joohyun it was all joke when she saw tears forming in her eyes.

  
“Then what is she doing? Why is she suddenly so busy then?” Something just did not add up for her because it looked to Joohyun that Seulgi wanted to tell her something that day but end up not talking about it.

  
“Did she tell you anything, Sooyoung?” 

  
“Nope, not a single thing.” Sooyoung flat out denied when Joohyun asked her. 

  
“Why are you so crazy about her anyways? She’s a demon, Joohyun. Don't you hate them? Mayhaps, do you like her in a different way?” She decided to tease Joohyun to change up the topic.

  
“W-what do you mean like her in a different way! You know I like Seungwan right!” Joohyun stuttered as she denied Sooyoung. There is no way she likes Seulgi right? They have only know each other not more than a month before Seulgi suddenly went missing so how could she develop feelings for her, a demon of all things.

  
_‘Of course you’d fall for her. There’s a connection between you after all.’_ Unknowingly, Sooyoung had been silently eavesdropping Joohyun’s inner monologue.

*****

“Calling to all demon slayers in the sanctuary, please provide your abilities and strength to catch the culprit.” The system announcement called out to everyone that morning. 

  
A few minutes after Joohyun had stepped foot into the sanctuary to report a recent hunt, an alarm sounded and the system had announced that a sacred relic had gone missing and the culprit was present at the sanctuary. All demon slayers present including the students were asked to provide their strength to catch the culprit.

  
“Stop running you jerk!” Yerim shouted as she shot out bullets at the suspect running away from her. 

  
“This is Ronsae , rank A. We’ve found the culprit and are heading towards section C!” Saeron called in to the reporting device on her hand as she chased behind Yerim. After putting her device into her pocket, she picked up her pace and immediately surpassed Yerim. 

  
Both of their eyes met for a second before she passed Yerim and catched up with the thief. They immediately synchronised with Saeron acting as the main attacker and Yerim providing cover and support on her weak points.

  
The both of them were just walking around the gardens in Section B where the academy was located when the system alarm sounded. The academy was the closest to the center of the sanctuary where the Eye of Purity was kept. The relic was actually a ring but the piece of jewellery encrusted on it was said to be able to protect and fend off whatever the user deemed as enemy. 

  
Yerim and Saeron rushed to the center of the sanctuary immediately when they heard system announcement. Black smoke engulfed the whole section as they arrived at the crime scene and the both of them instantly saw a group of men lying on the ground unconscious. 

  
“What happened here?” Yerim questioned as they ran further into the source and center of the black smoke. 

  
When they arrived at the center, they spotted a figure of a woman with her face covered and clad in a black cloak fighting with five security demon slayers. She handled all five of them with one hand while the other held a sphere shaped metallic box. She stopped the blade coming at her by grabbing onto it, breaking it in the process as she applied pressure. 

  
With half a blade in her hand, she threw it at the demon slayer so fast it had stabbed him before he could even react. Yerim and Saeron who had just reached immediately went into high gear, ambushing the thief. The ambushed thief kicked off the men and dodge Yerim’s bullets before she escaped the encircle heading out of the center section of the sanctuary. 

*****

When the three of them -the thief, Yerim and Saeron- reached a dead end, Yerim was sure they would catch the thief and make her suffer. 

  
“There’s no way you can escape now!" Yerim announced when both her and Saeron had the thief cornered in a dead end.

  
“You’re right, Yerim. There’s no way you could escape.” The thief spoke out, turning around to face them. 

  
“Wait a second, how di-" Before she could ask her, the thief held out her palm open facing them and black smoke started coming out engulfing the whole hallway.

  
“What the!” Yerim cussed as she threw a small scaled implosion grenade to suck in the smoke and the thief. Only, what she saw was an unconscious Saeron on the floor and the thief still stood in her original spot.

  
“Saeron!” She shouted as she quickly moved toward her checking if she was in any serious condition. 

  
“Oh, what a pity Yerim.” The thief said. “I was waiting for you.” 

  
Looking up from the ground, Yerim held her gun up and shot the thief only for the bullets to go through her without hurting her one bit. 

  
“You could’ve been one of us, Yerim.” She walked over to Yerim as she spoke, “But that’s okay, you have my offer. You still have the potential.” Just as the thief finished her words, Joohyun and Sooyoung arrived at the scene. 

  
“Get away, Yeri!” Joohyun shouted as Sooyoung’s mallet flew toward them with a frightening speed. Both Yerim and the thief dodged the mallet causing the wall behind them to crack with a large dent as the mallet was stuck on it.

  
“Can’t permeate through a sacred relic now can’t you?” Sooyoung mocked as Joohyun rushed forth with her blade charged with bright orange hues, ready to release the sword beams. 

  
She drew out her blade but was stopped by the thief’s hand halfway as she blinked to Joohyun’s position. Caught by surprise, Joohyun did not react fast enough when the thief kicked her hard on the stomach sending her flying away. 

  
“My turn!” Sooyoung announced as she too, ran toward the thief but from behind the thief, her mallet pulled itself out and flew toward her surrounding the thief on both sides. Seeing as though she had nowhere to run to, the thief bent her knees and lowered herself just enough for her to dodge the humongous mallet but Sooyoung was smart enough to slide to dodge her mallet and snatch the sphere box in the process. 

  
“Look what I got here.” Sooyoung smirked as she showed the box, she opened it only to see that there was nothing inside.

  
“You little shit!” She cussed and looked up to see the thief had summoned a rather large magic circle and black smoke was released, engulfing the hallway once again. 

  
“You still have my offer, Yerim. Think well about it.” Only her voice was heard as she disappeared from the hallway.

*****

Losing the Eye of Purity was a huge loss to the church. Humanity only had three sacred relics left after the second Holy War had ended and now they were left with two. 

  
There were seven sacred relics and the relics did not belong to any fraction. They were never good or evil, only to be wield by those they deemed worthy -the relics are sentient beings. Not being apart of any fraction meant even the demons would try to get their hands on them. After all, these were the ultimate weapons during the war period. 

  
Not everyone was able to wield the relics, whoever the relics deemed unworthy would lose their sanity and die as the relics slowly take away their life force. 

  
The only two relics left in the church would be Taeyeon's umbrella, the Spear of Justice and the Bow of Benevolence held by the Knight of Kindness, Younghyun. 

  
“So, what now?” Sooyoung asked Taeyeon who had been questioning the group of four -Joohyun, Sooyoung, Saeron and Yerim- about their encounter with the thief minus the part where the thief talked to Yerim -Yerim did not bother letting anyone know.

  
“There’s nothing much we can do, we can only hope the search team will be able to find her.” She answered before her phone rang. 

  
“Miss Taeyeon, Jeongyeon’s finally woke up from her comatose.” Seungwan who called her told her about the news before she proceeded to tell her that Jeongyeon wanted to meet her and talked about something.

  
“What do you want to talk about, Jeongyeon” Taeyeon asked after they had all greeted Jeongyeon and told her to get well soon.

  
Jeongyeon then went forth and explained how she was tempted by a demon lord. 

  
“It’s all my fault, I didn’t notice and let you all suffer from all this.” Taeyeon blamed herself, she was their caretaker back when they were all young so seeing them suffering really pained her. 

  
“But it wasn’t the demon lord who came out and tempted me, Taeyeon unnie.” Jeongyeon announced before she continued, “It was Seohyun unnie who helped him.” 

  
“Seohyun?” Everyone in the room was shocked by the revelation.


	14. Her Saviour

“How can it be Seohyun? Isn’t she dead?” Joohyun asked aloud to everyone in the room, she may be the newest to the demon slayer scene in the room but she had definitely heard of Seohyun. 

Seohyun was an incredible Knight for the church back when Joohyun was still a normal citizen but not long after Joohyun had been introduced into the church, Seohyun was announced dead after a ritual raid held by none other than the Demon Lord of Greed, Seunghyun.

Seunghyun had a particular liking to rituals as he liked to collect bodies of the dead to keep them as puppets, talk about living up to his name as the Lord of Greed. Holding rituals was just perfect for him, feeding off the souls and sins of the people while collecting their bodies for his puppetry at the same time. It was definitely a win-win situation for him. 

“Well, by right she should be...” Seungwan replied seeing as all the others in the hospital room could not bring themselves to answer.

To Jeongyeon and Saeron, Seohyun was like a big sister who took care of them when they were still in the orphan home. Although, the time Yerim had spent with Seohyun may not be long as Seohyun had left the orphan home not long after Yerim had joined, Yerim knew how much of an important figure this person was to Nayeon, Jeongyeon and Saeron.

“Do you think maybe... she became a puppet?” Yerim asked cautiously knowing this was a sensitive topic amongst the three -Taeyeon, Jeongyeon and Saeron- of them. 

"There is a chance she might be." Taeyeon answered Yerim after a few seconds, she then went to Jeongyeon’s bedside and put her palm on Jeongyeon’s forehead. Her palm then glowed hues of teal.

"Yoo Jeongyeon, I hereby order you to speak of only the truth." Fearing that Jeongyeon might have been lying to them, she decided to put a prayer on her. She commended before moving on to her questions, "Tell me, who tempted you into magistery?"

"Seohyun." Jeongyeon admitted with a blank stare as Taeyeon's orders took over her state of mind.

“And how exactly?” Taeyeon asked. 

“After Nayeon's passing, Seohyun came to me by herself and talked with me. She understood the pain I’ve been feeling and offered a chance to help me.” 

“A chance to help you? What did she offer?” 

“A chance to stop the pain.” Jeongyeon answered as she looked Taeyeon in the eye, “Something not even you could do, Taeyeon.” 

***** 

“So, what’s this thing with Seohyun so suddenly? Everyone was so quite just now.” Joohyun asked Seungwan after they had left the hospital with Taeyeon and Sooyoung staying behind at the hospital to take care of Jeongyeon. 

“Seohyun was in the same orphan home as the others, Hyun.” 

“Oh.” They stayed quiet afterward as the mood turned gloomy. 

“This is all your fault, Taeyeon.” Sooyoung blamed as she took a seat by the window of the room facing Taeyeon who was caressing Jeongyeon’s face as she slept, exhausted from Taeyeon’s previous interrogation. 

“Sigh, do you think I don’t feel sad over this? They are my children first and foremost, Sooyoung.” She sighed as sadness filled up her emotions. 

“You? Feel sad? Don’t bullshit with me, you’re just sad the project fucked up again aren’t you?” Sooyoung cussed feeling pissed at Taeyeon. 

“You don’t understand, Sooyoung. No one would ever want to see their children turn into a demon.” 

“You only raised them so they can be subjects for your Prodigy Project, don’t try to twist it.” Sooyoung retorted as she felt disgusted by Taeyeon. 

"Even if they are meant to be subjects for the Prodigy Project, it doesnt mean I don't love them like my children. I raised them, Sooyoung. Of course feelings will be involved."

“Was it? If you really did, we wouldn’t have a second Holy War three hundred years ago.” Taeyeon could only sigh to Sooyoung’s words, she really did love the children she raised but it was true that they were all picked up and raised by the church for the Prodigy Project. 

The Prodigy Project first started after the first Holy War as a reboot of the church's previous project, the ‘Ultimate Weapon’. The project aimed to gather children with high potentials as demon slayers and raised them to the level of Knights as quickly as possible. 

The project was done through the purification of the soul by using the flames of _Purgatorio_ to purify the children. You read it right, Seulgi was not the only one who could summon the flames of _Purgatorio_. Taeyeon was also able to summon the flames of _Purgatorio_ except the flames she summoned were of bright vermillion. 

The flames of _Purgatorio_ was passed down to humans by the Guardian of the South, the Vermillion Bird. The fire produced by the Vermilliom Bird was said to be so strong it could purify the souls of humans and even purify demons. He was supposed to be mankind’s greatest weapon against the Lord of Pride but was the first one to be taken down by Jiyong as he was the largest threat to Jiyoung's plans. 

When the Guardian of South had passed, he made sure to pass down the flames to humanity so that mankind had a chance to fight against the Lord of Pride but not everyone could wield the flames and summon it. Only pure and strong souls were able to summon the great flames of _Purgatorio_. 

What the church aimed to do with the Prodigy Project was to use Taeyeon’s Vermillion flames to purify the children’s souls to the purest state and pass on the vermillion flames so there would be more demon slayers who could have the chance to stand against the Demon Lords in the future. 

Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Seohyun, Saeron were all demon slayers who were hand picked by Taeyeon -the leader of the project- as their souls were able to stay close to pure even after going through so much tragedy in life but Yerim was different, Yerim's soul was so contaminated yet so strong that Taeyeon could not let herself witness a child destroy her own life so she decided to take in Yerim and work on her slowly. 

During their period in the orphan home, the prodigies were scheduled to be burnt in the vermillion flames everyday to purify their souls and after their session, their memories of the burning would be wiped out. The process of purification was not easy as cleansing a soul takes a long time, it took Seulgi two hours to barely get Yerim out of her demon state. 

In the last four hundred years since the Prodigy Project started, there had only ever been two prodigies who had been purified to successfully wield the flames of _Purgatorio_. But, the two prodigies who were supposed to be mankind’s hope against the Lord of Pride was slaughtered mercilessly by none other than the Lord of Wrath during the second Holy War and ever since then, all the prodigies that were picked up by the church had been failures. Some made it into the Knight rank quickly like Nayeon but also died just as quick due to encounters with Demon Lords. 

“And now even Seohyun who had sacrificed her life for the people can’t rest in peace. She’s become a puppet for that Greed bastard and it’s all your fault Taeyeon.” 

“How is it my fault? You think I would want to sacrifice my own children? If I could, I would’ve sacrificed myself back then.” Taeyeon retorted as she regretted her actions from years ago. If she could have arrived earlier back then, things would have ended differently. 

What Seohyun did back then was a sacrifice of one life in exchange for the lives of the thirty man raid team and the fifty victims of the ritual. 

"Well what do I know huh, I wasnt even there." Sooyoung was on the other side of the world hiding when the raid happened years ago.

“To be honest, I don’t really care about these subjects of yours but if this Seohyun who is clearly on another level compared to the others is our enemy now, then it’s definitely a big problem and it all started because of you.” 

***** 

"You know, I've never had the chance to ask." Yerim announced to Joohyun after they had settled down when they returned home. Saeron had other business to attend to so she did not follow them.

“Hmm? What do you want to ask?” Joohyun asked in return, curious as to what Yerim had wanted to ask her about. 

“You said you didn’t attend the academy right?” Yerim asked her as she turned her head to look at Joohyun who was sitting on the armchair next to her. 

“Yup, what about it?” Nodding her head, Joohyun replied to Yerim. 

“Well, how did you become a demon slayer then?” Yerim had been curious about this ever since Joohyun told her about it on the first night they met. As far as she knew, all the demon slayers she had ever gotten to know were all trained from the academy. 

“It’s not anything confusing, Yerim. Seungwan and your teacher Yongsun taught me privately.” 

“Private as in you had private lessons from them like homeschooling?” 

“Yup.” Seungwan nodded her head as she replied to Yerim. 

_Two years ago..._

It was there, she did not know where it was but she was sure there was a demon somewhere around where she was. She was just minding her own business walking down the street late at night when she felt the presence of a demon. 

There were not many people around where she was that night so she was quite worried. If she could sense the demon, the demon probably knew she could sense him as well. Chances of her being a target would definitely be higher as the demon would definitely want to erase her as she would pose a threat in exposing him. 

_‘It’s all gonna be alright, Joohyun. Just get out of here fast and go home quickly.’_ She told herself as she picked up her pace when she felt the presence getting closer and closer to her. 

Joohyun has always had it in her, her eyes had never betrayed her ever since the age of ten. Ever since she was able to spot the demons, Joohyun had always kept the mindset of avoiding and ignoring the demons as much as possible. 

She had always been disgusted by how the demons would interact with humans in the guise of a human body in broad daylight and when a demon would spot her looking at them, they would give her that chilly grin. It was horrifying for young Joohyun and it would still be horrifying for Joohyun then. 

Just when she felt the ‘demon' was about to approach her, she heard a scream of a child not far from where she was. She quickly turned her head to the direction from where the scream came from but all she saw was nothing. 

So, she decided to ignore it. _‘It’s none of your business, Joohyun. As long as you’re not the one getting eaten, don’t interact with them.’_ She tried to convince herself as she walked further and further away from the screaming. It was weird because no one near her could hear the screams or were they all ignoring it like her? 

After a few minutes of internal struggle, Joohyun decided to rush to the source of the scream. It just did not sit right with her, no one should be eaten much less a child. 

So she sprinted toward that corner of the street where the scream of the child came from. Grabbing a metal rod that she had picked up on her way there, she ran toward the demon who had spread his wings wide scaring the young boy even more. 

She tightened her grip on the metal rod and swung it at the demon's head before its claws could touch the young boy. As the demon was knocked away by the metal rod, Joohyun quickly grabbed the child and the both of them started to run for their lives. 

When they ran out of the corner, she realised that they were actually surrounded by a bunch of demons. No wonder the people around her did not react to the scream, they were all demons. 

Having no where to run to, all Joohyun could do was hug the crying little boy as they both despaired in the middle of the demons’ encirclement. 

“How should we split them?” One of the demons asked the others as they all eyed both Joohyun and the little boy hungrily. 

“Since there’s eight of us and two of them, how about four of us on one and the other four take the other one?” The winged demon of the group suggested. 

“I want the girl, she looks so damn delicious.” 

Hearing all these made her felt more disgusted by the demons but there was nothing she could do except for feeling the despair. 

Just when the demons have finally decided on who was going to take which prey, a humongous ball of fire hit them. It was so bright that even Joohyun who had closed her eyes and covering the little boy’s sight could feel the bright light from the flames. 

Although the fireball was aimed at the encircle with Joohyun and the little boy in the dead center, it did not burn nor hurt them one bit at all. 

“What the fuck was that!” One of the demons cussed as he yelled, confused by the ambush from out of nowhere. 

When Joohyun opened her eyes, she could not see clearly but all she saw was the back of a woman standing in front of her with a ring of pitch black flames locking all of them including the demons in the ring of fire. 

“It’s alright now, just close your eyes and things will be over in minutes.” The woman assured her without looking back at her once. So Joohyun did, she closed her eyes shut and hugged the little boy who was still crying as she tried to cover him so as to not let him see what was happening around them. 

When Joohyun did open her eyes, the black flames had turned into the purest of white that she had ever laid her eyes on. Standing there was a woman wielding a sword slashing the group of demons as her blade summoned the Holy Flames of _Paradiso_. 

It was so beautiful, Joohyun thought as she witnessed the scene unfolding in front of her. She felt as though she was watching a dance where the dancer was the woman who had white flames surrounding her as she slashed and killed each and every one of the demons. 

When it was finally over, the woman came over to them and introduced herself as Seungwan. She had promised to erase their memories of the incident but Joohyun wanted to remember that day. No, she wanted to be like Seungwan. She wanted to become someone who was strong, someone who could stand against the demons and slay them. 

"And that, was kinda how I was introduced to demon slaying." Joohyun said as she finished her recount of how she met Seungwan. After that fateful night, all Joohyun could ever thought about was how charming and beautiful Seungwan was when she danced with the white flames and took down those demons. To simply put, Joohyun was charmed by Seungwan.

“But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t attend the academy though.” Yerim replied, still confused as to why Joohyun skipped the academy. The academy would teach the demon slayers all they should know about and sometimes, Yerim felt Joohyun really needed to get into the academy. Because honestly, Joohyun seemed to lack the knowledge of even some of the most basic things sometimes. 

“I was eighteen at the time, Seungwan felt that I was too old for the academy and decided to teach me by herself. Yongsun tagged along just for fun but she still taught me some good techniques though.” Joohyun answered Yerim. 

“Which reminds me,” Joohyun continued as she suddenly thought of something, “How come you don’t use your black flames anymore, Seungwan?” 

“Black flames? I only summon white flames, Hyun. The black flames belong to the _Inferno_.” Seungwan answered, her face clearly showing confusion. 

“But I remember seeing black flames that night.” Confusion also dawned upon Joohyun as she realised the black flames never belong to Seungwan. _‘Then who was that?’_

“Maybe you were just seeing things, Hyun.” 

“Hmm, then how did you find us that night?” 

“It was my mission, the church had requested me to investigate the neighbourhood because there had been people missing for days. Thank god I arrived on time though, or you might have really turned into dinner.” Thinking back, Seungwan realised then that when she did arrived on the scene, the group of demons looked as though they had been suffering from a previous incident. 

"Anyways, I'm going to make some coffee. Want a cup?" Seungwan announced as she stood up from beside Yerim. Both Yerim and Joohyun declined her before she made her way to the kitchen.

“This is strange, I swear I definitely saw black flames that night.” Joohyun continued to convince herself. 

"Maybe you really were just seeing things, _unnie._ " Yerim reasoned out, "So, Seungwan and her 'Fire Dance' huh." She air quoted as she sarcastically pointed out Joohyun's admiration for Seungwan.

“Sigh, you wouldn’t know, Yerim. You haven’t seen her fight seriously before, it was so beautiful.” There was a look of admiration on her face when she explained to Yerim. 

“So, you fell for her because of that?” 

“I guess? Seungwan’s just a really wonderful person, the more you get to know about her the more you like her.” 

“What about Seulgi then? Don’t you like her?” Yerim asked and Joohyun’s face immediately turned into that of a depressed expression. 

“Sigh, I don’t like Seulgi at all. Why does everyone keep saying I like her.” 

No matter how much Joohyun had denied, Yerim could see it. Heck, even Seungwan who was usually the clueless one was able to see it clear as day. Even when Joohyun outright admitted that she had feelings for Seungwan, Yerim could still see all it. 

When Joohyun looks at Seungwan, there was always a look of admiration but it was different when her eyes were on Seulgi. As much as Joohyun wanted to deny it, her eyes couldn’t lie. There was always affection and fondness in her eyes even when Seulgi teased her to no end. 

And when Seulgi had suddenly disappeared from their lives three months ago, Joohyun was worried for days and she still was worried. The sleepless nights Joohyun has had honestly made Yerim worried but she would never admit it. 

_‘If you’re gonna make her fall for you and leave just like that, I'm definitely coming for your ass, Seulgi.’_ Yerim said mentally as she swore that she would kill Seulgi if she so as hurt Joohyun’s feeling. 

_‘I wouldn’t, Yerim. If anything, she’s the most important thing to me right now.’_


	15. Ceremony

**_“Don’t get too ahead of yourself.”_ **

**_“What do you mean get too ahead? I'm definitely gonna be delighted when I see her reaction.”_ **

**_“Piss her off too much and you might face death, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”_ **

The other person only laughed off before he left. Even though he may not be the Lord of Pride, he definitely was one hell of a prideful demon. 

***** 

“ _Unnie_! Duck!” Yerim shouted for Joohyun when she saw a chair flying her way. Fortunately, Joohyun had heard her and ducked just in time to avoid having a chair crashed into her. 

_‘Just, what the fuck is going on!’_ Joohyun thought to herself as she looked around the once majestic and magnificent hall that had turned into chaos. Fear and confusion took over her as she stood in there, trying to process what had just happened before her eyes fixed on someone coming her way. 

_A Day Ago..._

“I can’t believe you’re about to graduate and actually become a demon slayer starting tomorrow.” Joohyun said dramatically, acting like she was trying to hold her tears as she teased Yerim. 

“Can you stop that!” Yerim responded as she gave Joohyun a deadpan look, disgusted and cringed by Joohyun’s dramatic actions while Seungwan who had been at the side watching the both of them, laughed. 

“Yerim, I’m proud of you.” Joohyun smiled proudly at Yerim after the laughter died down. Although the both of them may have only known each other for only a few months, Joohyun had really grown fond of Yerim. 

It was safe to say that the both of them have gone through so much together in this short amount of time spent together. When Yerim had turned into a demon, it was Joohyun and the rest who had saved her and when she was stuck in the hospital, Joohyun was also the one who would take care of her and Saeron. 

When Seulgi had gone missing, Yerim was the one who comforted and accompanied Joohyun during her sleepless nights as Seungwan had been far too busy to even stay at the apartment for a night. Yerim may not say it or want to admit it but Joohyun knew she cared about her. 

She knew Yerim could have moved out of the apartment to live with Saeron after they were discharged from the hospital since Yerim had already finished her report on her field research. Surprisingly, Yerim decided to stay at the apartment.

“I’ve come to like this apartment a lot.” She would reason but Joohyun knew that Yerim had stayed because she wanted to accompany her and did not want her to feel lonely. It was also the subtle things that Yerim would do that really touched her heart, like how she would try to distract Joohyun and keep her attention from her thoughts whenever Joohyun starts having them. 

“Thank you, unnie.” Yerim smiled in return as she gave herself a twirl, showing off the white graduation gown she was going to wear the next day. 

"Alright, better sleep early, Yerim. Wouldn't wanna wake up late for your blessing ceremony tommorow." Seungwan advised Yerim as she stood up from the couch she was sitting on.

“I’ll try to attend the blessing ceremony on time if I can finish up this mission fast.” Seungwan announced, she felt apologetic that she might miss Yerim's blessing ceremony as she was too busy with her schedule. Her inauguration ceremony was coming up as well so she had been too busy during the past weeks that she barely even had the time to spend with the rest of them. 

“It’s okay if you don’t make it, unnie.” Yerim smiled understandingly at Seungwan, “I still got Saeron and this old hag with me and there’s Sooyoung too!” she exclaimed as Joohyun shouted a “Yah!” along with a slap to Yerim’s forearm. 

Seungwan chuckled at their antics before she grabbed her jingum and bid them good night as she head out for her mission. 

“Well.” Joohyun paused before she continued, “Go sleep now, you have a big day tomorrow.” 

“Want me to sleep with you tonight, _unnie_?” Yerim asked, she knew Joohyun was starting to have those thoughts again. 

_‘You miss her so much and yet you’re in denial, sigh.’_ She could only sigh as she looked on at Joohyun who was getting ready for bed. 

“Hmm, okay. Let’s sleep together tonight.” Sharing the same bed together was not a first time thing for them as Yerim had done so since the past three months. Plus, Joohyun has a queen sized bed anyways. 

***** 

“Wow, this place has not changed one bit at all.” Sooyoung said as they entered the sanctuary's assembly hall where the blessing ceremony was going to be held. The last time she was there would be close to five years ago when she was attending her blessing ceremony to become a demon slayer. 

“There she is!” Joohyun exclaimed when she finally spotted Yerim from the sea of people. Sooyoung who had been eyeing the decoration and ornaments of the assembly hall was surprised by the sudden shout from Joohyun. 

Yerim had left the apartment earlier that morning as she had to get to the sanctuary early for the preparations so Joohyun and Sooyoung arrived much later than her as they were only there as spectators.

Joohyun and Sooyoung could see an excited Yerim in her white gown talking animatedly with Saeron who was equally excited for Yerim. They made their way their as they announced their presence to the two. 

“ _Unnie!_ You’re finally here!” Yerim exclaimed when she saw the two walking toward them. 

“You sure look excited don’t you.” Joohyun teased the overly excited Yerim. 

“Of course! I’m finally going to become a demon slayer!” She grinned as she replied to Joohyun. 

When the blessing ceremony was finally starting after half an hour of waiting, Sooyoung who had been sitting beside Joohyun who was sandwiched between her and Saeron, felt a strange presence. 

“Hyun, something doesn’t feel right.” She told her as she continued to looked around the large hall, trying to spot the abnormal in the crowded hall. Joohyun and Saeron who had heard her immediately turned their head to her. 

“What doesn’t feel right, Sooyoung?” Joohyun asked, befuddled by Sooyoung. 

“I’m not sure but it feels like something's outside, I’m going out to check it.” She announced as she stood up to leave the hall, “You two stay in here and see if there’s anything weird going on.” 

And so they did, they stayed in the hall with alertness as the whole ceremony went on. 

***** 

Yerim could feel it, the presence of the person who had been hounding her. She had excused herself to head to the toilet and that was when she felt someone following her. 

“What do you want?” She barked at the person, the same person who had stolen the Eye of Purity. 

“Nothing, just came to congratulate you on your blessing day.” The thief spoke, her voice sounded familiar to Yerim but she could not pinpoint exactly where she had heard it before. Truthfully, Yerim had almost been tempted by the thief had it not been for a certain someone in her head who had been trying to keep her from being tempted. 

“Do you mind getting the fuck outta here?” She had been kind enough to not aim her revolver at the woman. No, she wouldn’t do such a thing to ruin such a day. It was going to be a day filled with celebrations but thinking about it, wouldn’t killing a mage or demon be the most perfect way to celebrate her graduation from the academy? She pondered to herself as the woman walked closer to her. 

“My offer is still open for you, Yerim.” The thief said before she disappeared. 

When she returned back to the large assembly hall, she still felt the exact same presence of the woman. Shocked by the presence, she hastily looked around to see if the thief was here amongst all the people in the hall. Only, she did not see anything abnormal. 

The ceremony went on and when it finally came to the blessing session, Yerim had momentarily forgotten about her encounter with the thief as nervousness and excitement took over her. 

This was it, the moment she had been waiting for ever since she started attending the academy a year ago. Students of the academy were lining up one by one as they go up front to receive their blessings, she was finally going to become a real demon slayer. 

Yerim had everything planned out, she planned to work with Taeyeon on the first few months to leech on her and gain credits to rank up quickly. Then after she reached B where she would be able to work solo, she was going to go all out and take requests and missions every day to rank up to S as soon as possible. 

It was after the final student had been blessed when the sound of applause by an individual was heard through out the hall. The person stood up as he’s eyes glowed the colour of Amber. 

“Well done!” He shouted loudly as he applauded, “Should we start with the show time then?” 

By then, everyone in the hall were paying their attention to him. It was safe to say this person who had stood there in the center of the assembly hall was a threat to everyone as only an idiot would not be able to feel the amount of magical energy the person wielded. 

Saeron and Joohyun stood up from their seats as they rushed toward him with different prayers in their heads and different hues of colours glowing on their swords. The moment the both of them reached him, two demon slayers from the crowd jumped in and defended him, taking the hit for him. 

Everyone in the hall was shocked to see the scene unfold before them. After a second of shock, they all became wary and drew out their weapons. 

“I must say, I am quite a brave one, aren’t I? Standing in the middle of a crowd of demon slayers yet I’m so confident none of you are able to hurt me one bit.” He mocked each and every one of them. He could feel the presence of a Knight in the hall but a Knight by themselves would not be able to do anything to him. If Sooyoung had been in the hall as well, then there would definitely be someone who could go head to head with him. 

The injured bodies of the two demon slayers that were lying on the ground after taking hits from both Saeron and Joohyun then stood up in a mechanical manner. 

“Meet my new born puppets everyone!” He smirked, knowing everyone in the hall was starting to feel the fear. 

****** 

Seungwan was late. In fact, she was very late. She thought her mission would end around dawn but who would have thought there would be a nest of winged demons. 

_‘Oh shit, I'm super late!’_ She thought as she took out her phone to give Joohyun a call to tell her she was on her way to the ceremony but there was no signal on Joohyun’s end. 

_‘Huh? No signal? What’s going on?’_ Of all places, the church sanctuary did not have signal? Something did not feel right to her so, she increased her pace. 

When she did arrive at the sanctuary, there was a dark atmosphere enveloping the whole of the sanctuary. She wanted to call for back up but there was no signal, it was either she run away to an area with signal or rush to the assembly hall as she was worried, she might be too late. 

She thought it was bad when she entered the sanctuary but in reality, it was even worse than she had thought as she arrived at the assembly hall. 

Seungwan was confused to see the chaotic scene in front of her as she saw everyone fighting amongst themselves. When she spotted Joohyun fighting another demon slayer, she immediately ran to her and tried to stop the fight between them. 

“What’s going on, Hyun?” She asked after she pushed the other demon slayer away from Joohyun. Just as she finished her question, she saw Junmyeon, the Knight of Charity being sent flying away from one end of the hall to the other end. If a Knight was sent flying from one end to another then there was definitely something serious going on. Joohyun then explained to her what happened. 

When the blessing ceremony was coming to an end, the Lord of Greed had somehow infiltrated the sanctuary along with his puppets. The fight started with him being outnumbered by the demon slayers but after he slaughtered more and more demon slayers, the more puppets he gained to fight back. 

Junmyeon, the only Knight in the sanctuary at that moment immediately went into high gear to take on the Lord of Greed but it seemed as though the Demon Lord had only been toying with him. 

“Where’s Joy?” Seungwan asked, if there was anyone who would stand a chance against a Demon Lord by themselves it was definitely her. 

“She said she felt something weird and left the sanctuary before all this started.” Joohyun explained to Seungwan. Come to think of it, it was probably a trap set by the Lord of Greed to lure her away. 

“Then we have no choice, I'll team up with Suho to deal with him. You and others try to keep things under control, alright?” She said before she made a dash for the Lord of Greed. If Junmyeon could not do a thing to the Demon Lord, then maybe her flames of _Paradiso_ could. However, she was stopped when she was halfway there as a woman had appeared in front of her to obstruct her path. 

The woman’s sword thrust toward her but fortunately, her reflexes were fast enough for her to dodge and parry the slash with the sheath of her jingum. Seungwan was shocked as she caught a glimpse of the blade. 

_‘It’s not the real deal, right? Probably a replica.’_ She thought to herself as she eyed the woman standing in front of her. This person who had her face covered had a sinister feel to her. 

“It is the real one.” The woman said as she brandished her sword, “This is indeed the Blade of Compassion.” 

Seungwan knew she should be shocked that she was facing an opponent with a sacred relic but the voice of the woman sounded exactly like Seohyun’s voice. Seungwan may not be close with Seohyun but during the years before Seohyun had passed away, she had done enough missions with her to recognise her voice.

_‘Could she really be Seohyun?’_ She thought to herself but it didn’t matter. No, it shouldn’t have mattered because Seohyun was dead so even if the person standing in front of her was Seohyun, it would have been a puppet. 

_‘Wait a minute, do the puppets even tal-’_ She did not have the time to think as her opponent attacked. 

Seungwan dodged the attack coming her way as she consequently drew her blade out to attack her opponent. White flames immediately burst out from the blade and spread out but her opponent was fast enough to avoid the flames catching on her. 

“Let’s compare notes, Seungwan. Your white flames and my blade.” Her opponent said as she rushed in again to deal another blow at Seungwan who equally attacked back. 

They were head to head as they exchanged blows after blows until Suho who was fighting with the Lord of Greed was blown away from a punch and sent flying her way. She tried to cushion him but it was futile as the both of them clashed and fell. 

“I’ve had enough of waiting!” Seunghyun yelled out impatiently, he felt that he had waited far too long for the person he was expecting. 

“You lot are no fun at all! I’ve been waiting patiently for her and yet she hasn’t even appeared.” All this while, he had been patiently toying with Junmyeon while waiting for a certain someone but it seemed as though she was not coming at all. Right when he was about to walk over to the two and end their lives, he spotted Joohyun fighting with one of his puppets. 

_‘Interesting.’_ He thought to himself before he grabbed a chair beside him and threw it at Joohyun. 

" _Unnie,_ duck!" He could hear someone shouted not far away as Joohyun ducked the chair and look around before her eyes turned to him. He smirked before he blinked to stand in front of her.

“Oh my, you look awfully just like her. I can see why she’s attracted to you.” The Lord of Greed said and he could see the confusion on Joohyun's face. Suddenly, strands of white flames and bullets were shot at him. The bullets? He ignored. The white flames? He couldn’t so he dodged. 

As he dodged the white flames, Yerim came quickly and grabbed Joohyun to get out of the way. Seungwan took this as a chance to get closer to the Demon Lord as she leaped toward him. 

She spun as she slashed at him, creating a wheel of fire around herself but the Demon Lord was no idiot to take on the flames from _Paradiso_ as he controlled two of his puppets to jump in between and take the hit for him. 

Junmyeon quickly moved pass Seungwan and the puppets to try and attack the Demon Lord. The woman who was previously with them wanted to stop him but Yerim stopped her as she shot bullets at her. 

“I didn’t want to fight you just now at the toilet but I’m definitely going to beat you up this time.” She announced to the woman. 

***** 

They were all getting tired, it was as if there was no end to this. Not a single one of them could touch the Lord of Greed at all and they just could not bring themselves to hurt the demon slayer turned puppets. 

Junmyeon avoided the puppets as he rushed toward the Demon Lord with his rapier sword lighting up in red hues mixed with green. He thrust continuously toward the Lord of Greed and his rapier split into afterimages but each and everyone stab was dodged by the Demon Lord. He then grab the blade of the rapier sword and swung it, throwing both Junmyeon and the sword away. 

Seungwan who had been behind immediately moved foward to try and deal damage seeing as he was busy throwing Junmyeon away. Joohyun did a follow up as she released a few sword beams to cover up for Seungwan but, the Demon Lord would not be a Demon Lord if he could not handle something as simple as this.

Strings of white flame surrounded Seungwan as she dashed to him and slashed. The Demon Lord finally had enough toying with them as he took their hit full brunt to show that everything that they tried and do would be futile against him. 

“Your flames are not strong as your ancestors', you’re simply far too young.” He told her before giving her a punch so hard that it blew her away. Too bad, the Son bloodline was blessed and guided by the virtues or he would have already made her one of his puppets. However, the Knight who he had just thrown away was quite a strong one. It was decided, that he would feed off the Knight and made him his puppet afterwards. 

“Now that the both of them are out of the way, it’s just you left.” He smirked as he looked at Joohyun. Would she really come? He did not know but if you don’t try then you wouldn’t know right? 

And try he did. His eyes gleamed while his right fist glowed in hues of amber as he eyed Joohyun with killing intent. Joohyun tried to steady herself as she took on a fighting stance but the Demon Lord was exerting an amount of energy so strong that the whole atmosphere of the hall changed. It suddenly felt like there was a force pressing everyone down.

With her right leg stepped back to anchor herself, Joohyun positioned her katana to her side with both of her hands on the hilt of the sword. Her blade glowed in different hues of the colour spectrum. She was not sure if her trick would work, she had read in a book before about a certain prayer that could work against even the Demon Lords but who knew if it would really work. 

The ground beneath the Lord of Greed broke as he leaped to her, she tried to slash him but he was too fast. So, she had no choice but to parry his right fist. The punch was so strong it broke her sword in halves immediately. 

_‘Shit.’_ She thought to herself when the blade broke. The Demon Lord standing in front of her right then with his eyes gleaming amber and the sinister intent had definitely scared her. Being scared to death, Joohyun could not even move her legs and she doesn’t know whether it was from the oppressive energy exerted by the Demon Lord or just her fear. 

Suddenly, six wings sprouted out from the Demon Lord’s back as both of his hands turned hard like the scales of a dragon. He then pulled back his right fist, ready to give her a hard blow. 

“Seulgi!” Joohyun had shouted out for her name when the fist came her way. She did not know why she had called out to Seulgi, who had disappeared from her live but her first instinct when she was faced with danger was to call out to her. 

A few seconds passed and she was expecting to be pulverised to shreds by the Demon Lord but instead, she felt nothing. Sensing something abnormal, Joohyun opened her tightly shut eyes to see a woman standing in between her and the Lord of Greed. 

The woman had grabbed Seunghyun's fist to prevent him from hurting Joohyun. 

“It's alright now, Joo Joo. Just close your eyes and things will be over in minutes.” She assured Joohyun as she looked back at her to give her a calm smile. 

“Took you long enough.” Joohyun smiled back. 


End file.
